Leafall

Spring and Fall: 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 and 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, or ghost guessed:
It was the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins


"[Sir Ector] stood gloomily for a moment, watching his two boys trying to catch the last leaves in the chase. They had not gone out with that intention, and did not really, even in those distant days, believe that every leaf you caught would mean a happy month next year. Only, as the west wind tore the golden rags away, they looked extremely fascinating and were difficult to catch. For the mere sport of catching them, of shouting and laughing and feeling giddy as they looked up, and of darting about to trap the creatures, which were certainly alive in the cunning with which they slipped away, the two boys were prancing about like young fauns in the ruin of the year." --T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone.


"Ai! laurie lantar lassi surinen,
Yeni unotime ve ramar aldaron!"
[Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
long years numberless as the wings of trees!]

--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.