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Spring and Fall
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
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4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:
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Spring and Fall: To a Young Child
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Spring and Fall

poem by Hopkins
Also known as: ā€œSpring and Fall: To a Young Childā€
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History

Spring and Fall, poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written in 1880 and published posthumously in 1918 in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poet likens a little girlā€™s sorrow at the waning of summer to the larger, tragic nature of human life. Set in rhymed couplets, the melancholy poem is a notable example of sprung rhythm, the irregular system of prosody that Hopkins developed.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.