| Natalie Merchant – Spring and Fall: To a Young Child Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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“Spring and Fall” (1880) Complete Text: To a young child Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for. Summary: The poem opens with a question to a child: “Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?” “Goldengrove,” a place whose name suggests an idyllic play-world, is “unleaving,” or losing its leaves as winter approaches. And the child, with her “fresh thoughts,” cares about the leaves as much as about “the things of man.” The speaker reflects that age will alter this innocent response, and that later whole “worlds” of forest will lie in leafless disarray (“leafmeal,” like “piecemeal”) without arousing Margaret’s sympathy. The child will weep then, too, but for a more conscious reason. However, the source of this knowing sadness will be the same as that of her childish grief–for “sorrow’s springs are the same.” That is, though neither her mouth nor her mind can yet articulate the fact as clearly as her adult self will, Margaret is already mourning over her own mortality. Form: This poem has a lyrical rhythm appropriate for an address to a child. In fact, it appears that Hopkins began composing a musical accompaniment to the verse, though no copy of it remains extant. The lines form couplets and each line has four beats, like the characteristic ballad line, though they contain an irregular number of syllables. The sing-song effect this creates in the first eight lines is complicated into something more uneasy in the last seven; the rhymed triplet at the center of the poem creates a pivot for this change. Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm” meter (see the Analysis section of this SparkNote for more on “sprung rhythm”) lets him orchestrate the juxtapositions of stresses in unusual ways. He sometimes incorporates pauses, like musical rests, in places where we would expect a syllable to separate two stresses (for example, after “Margaret” in the first line and “Leaves” in the third). At other times he lets the stresses stand together for emphasis, as in “will weep” and “ghost guessed”; the alliteration here contributes to the emphatic slowing of the rhythm at these most earnest and dramatic points in the poem. Commentary: The title of the poem invites us to associate the young girl, Margaret, in her freshness, innocence, and directness of emotion, with the springtime. Hopkins’s choice of the American word “fall” rather than the British “autumn” is deliberate; it links the idea of autumnal decline or decay with the biblical Fall of man from grace. That primordial episode of loss initiated human mortality and suffering; in contrast, the life of a young child, as Hopkins suggests (and as so many poets have before him–particularly the Romantics), approximates the Edenic state of man before the Fall. Margaret lives in a state of harmony with nature that allows her to relate to her paradisal “Goldengrove” with the same sympathy she bears for human beings or, put more cynically, for “the things of man.” Margaret experiences an emotional crisis when confronted with the fact of death and decay that the falling leaves represent. What interests the speaker about her grief is that it represents such a singular (and precious) phase in the development of a human being’s understanding about death and loss; only because Margaret has already reached a certain level of maturity can she feel sorrow at the onset of autumn. The speaker knows what she does not, namely, that as she grows older she will continue to experience this same grief, but with more self-consciousness about its real meaning (“you will weep, and know why”), and without the same mediating (and admittedly endearing) sympathy for inanimate objects (“nor spare a sigh, / Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie”). This eighth line is perhaps one of the most beautiful in all of Hopkins’s work: The word “worlds” suggests a devastation and decline that spreads without end, well beyond the bounds of the little “Goldengrove” that seems so vast and significant to a child’s perception. Loss is basic to the human experience, and it is absolute and all-consuming. “Wanwood” carries the suggestion of pallor and sickness in the word “wan,” and also provides a nice description of the fading colors of the earth as winter dormancy approaches. The word “leafmeal,” which Hopkins coined by analogy with “piecemeal,” expresses with poignancy the sense of wholesale havoc with which the sight of strewn fallen leaves might strike a naive and sensitive mind. In the final, and heaviest, movement of the poem, Hopkins goes on to identify what this sorrow is that Margaret feels and will, he assures us, continue to feel, although in different ways. The statement in line 11 that “Sorrow’s springs are the same” suggests not only that all sorrows have the same source, but also that Margaret, who is associated with springtime, represents a stage all people go through in coming to understand mortality and loss. What is so remarkable about this stage is that while the “mouth” cannot say what the grief is for, nor the mind even articulate it silently, a kind of understanding nevertheless materializes. It is a whisper to the heart, something “guessed” at by the “ghost” or spirit–a purely intuitive notion of the fact that all grieving points back to the self: to one’s own suffering of losses, and ultimately to one’s own mortality. Though the narrator’s tone toward the child is tender and sympathetic, he does not try to comfort her. Nor are his reflections really addressed to her because they are beyond her level of understanding. We suspect that the poet has at some point gone through the same ruminations that he now observes in Margaret; and that his once-intuitive grief then led to these more conscious reflections. Her way of confronting loss is emotional and vague; his is philosophical, poetical, and generalizing, and we see that this is his more mature–and “colder”–way of likewise mourning for his own mortality. -sparknotes ;-] |
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| Natalie Merchant – Spring and Fall: To a Young Child Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/hopkins/section4.rhtml Great analysis of the words. |
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| Enya – How Can I Keep From Singing? Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I wish Enya had used the original lyrics, but these are really nice just the same. The original lyrics were by Robert Wadsworth Lowry, a Christian, so if my comments offend you, take it up with him. ;] "My life goes on in endless song above earth's lamentations." - Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) His kingdom includes his sheep (Christians). We are in the world, but we are not of it. Our hope and joy is in Heaven with God, above all of the sorrows of the earth. "I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation." - New creation: Heaven and the new, sinless earth that God will create. The hymn he hears is far off and quiet, almost to the point of completely silent, especially in this loud, fallen world. But the writer still hears it and knows it is real. And he waits for it eagerly. "Through all the tumult and the strife I ear it's music ringing. it sounds and echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?" -Though the sound is faint during times of persecution, strife, and heartache, Lowry can still hear the hymn. The hymn represents the promise of Heaven and being with God for eternity. "But though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth and though the darkness round me close, songs in the night if giveth." - Again, through the storm (and not just any storm; a TEMPEST! A violent storm), the writer still holds on to the promise that he knows is true (though the world rejects it) that Christ will return. "No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I'm clinging since Love is Lord or Heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?" - From Psalm 62:2: "He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken." Christ is often referred to as "Rock of Ages". This is a reference to Exodus 33:22 where we see a foreshadowing of Christ in the Old Testament. God tells Moses that He will hide him in the cleft of a rock while He passes over; just as the repentant are hiding in Christ as God judges the unrepentant for their sins. We are told The original lyrics say "Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth" but since Christ is God, and God is Love then this verse still works out. :) "When tyrants tremble in their fear and hear their death knell ringing, When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?" - This verse it pretty obvious, though that fact doesn't make it any less beautiful. :] "In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging." - Prayers for the persecuted believers. There are Christians on the other side of the world (even today) being tortured, put in prison, & killed for their faith in Christ. This verse mentions them and reminds us to keep them in our prayers. "When friends by shame are undefiled how can I keep from singing?" - This is probably my favorite line in the entire hymn. I never understood it when I was younger. I tried to make sense of it but I couldn't. Finally, after God graciously saved me in 2008, I was thinking about this hymn and I FINALLY got it! The world is fallen. We have all sinned and are therefore are separated from God and deserving of punishment (Hell). But when the Gospel is preached we are brought to shame because we realize that we have all broken the Law. We have all sinned. We are then humbled by our shame and we repent and trust in Christ (who took the punishment that we deserve) as the only means of salvation. We are no longer defiled; we are made clean (undefiled). Thus, "When friends, by SHAME, are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?" I mean....with a God like that who would save wretched sinners like us... ...how CAN you keep from singing? God bless, Aaron :] |
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