More Seasonal Poetry: Hulme & Hopkins

Two poems. Two decidedly distinct moods.

I’ve tagged both poems as examples of “modernism.” Hulme’s is an Imagist experiment, and, while it’s true that Hopkins isn’t a proper “modernist” poet, the publication of his works in 1918 had an incredible effect on poets of the age. Proto-modernist?

“Autumn”    ( T.E. Hulme [1909])

A touch of cold in the Autumn night —
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

“Spring and Fall”     (Gerard Manly Hopkins [pub. 1918])

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 & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.