Gerald Manley Hopkins

I truly enjoyed Hopkins' poem, "Spring and Fall". In the beginning of the poem he talks about a girl who is "grieving" over the leaves falling. This poem sounds like a grown up teaching an innocent child of how things may come and go. Generally when people grieve it's over something like a person who has died, but she is so innocent she is able to grieve over leaves, which she seems to believe is dying. He explains to the girl that "As the heart grows older, It will come to such sights colder," which i believe he is telling her that, as she grows up, she will experience much more things such as true death, and other cruel things which she doesn't quite understand just yet. As the leaves are falling, they symblize death. Leaves are always falling, and people are always dying. Children begin to realize death more and more when they grow up, and this child will one day realize that leaves aren't as important than people dying, and she will eventually no longer "spare a sigh" for the leaves.