Hopkins ,

Yes , Hopkins, being a child of the very godless sixties and having unusually godless parents I was a bit nervous of religious types, ..cynics like Eliot were OK but a true God Botherer of Hopkins' stature made me suspicious but..English 100 1973 Maq.Uni and I was won over and in many ways came to like him , his language and his rhythm...and of course my strange closed inward looking North Shore very Anglo world was unravelling fast, at times not fast enough.. .. and religion ..I still haven't really obtained any in any orthodox sense, or really in any unorthodox sense and am content in my Humanism but I do like other people having beliefs..good on them I say ...this poem is my favourite Hopkins..

Spring and Fall
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 and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins