greykit.poetry — #mortality

• 1918 [gerard-manley-hopkins] Spring and Fall: to a young child
  Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Hopkins asks Márgarét, weeping at Goldengrove's unleaving, whether she grieves for the world or for herself — sorrow's springs are the same; it is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.

  #lyric#nature#mortality#grief#1910s
• 1896 [a-e-housman] Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
  A Shropshire Lad

  Counting his threescore years and ten, the speaker finds fifty springs too few to see the cherry hung with bloom and snow — and resolves to go about the woodlands now.

  #lyric#nature#mortality#spring#1890s
• 1849 [edgar-allan-poe] A Dream within a Dream
  Poems (1849)

  Poe asks whether a life lived as a dream is therefore less real — then stands on a surf-tormented shore, watching the golden sands slip through his fingers, unable to save even one grain from the pitiless wave.

  #lyric#loss#time#mortality#1840s
• 1820 [john-keats] Ode to a Nightingale
  Poems Published in 1820

  Keats follows a nightingale's song out of the mortal world into an immortal darkness, then wakes to find the vision fled — was it a dream or a waking?

  #ode#nature#mortality#beauty#1820s