| MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving | |
| Over Goldengrove unleaving? | |
| Leáves, líke the things of man, you | |
| With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? | |
| Áh! ás the heart grows older | 5 |
| It will come to such sights colder | |
| By and by, nor spare a sigh | |
| Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; | |
| And yet you wíll weep and know why. | |
| Now no matter, child, the name: | 10 |
| Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same. | |
| Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed | |
| What heart heard of, ghost guessed: | |
| It ís the blight man was born for, | |
| It is Margaret you mourn for. |
-- G.M. Hopkins
Margaret is crying about leaves, but she's also crying about mortality. We as people channel the emotional force of abstract and general situations into specific symbols. That's one reason that poetry matters. Specific words, syntax, sound touch a reader because they aren't just words -- they evoke things that matter deeply that we can't access without words. Or maybe we do access them internally, but the words help us to commune with other people about them and be pierced or comforted by the understanding that someone else also knows about this. Poetry channels forces that are too big or too confusing for us to confront without it.
