Wanwood Leafmeal Lie

Poststructural Pub
1

What is ‘wanwood’? I found the word in this poem
but can’t find a precise definition. I guess this
poem is a way into GMH. Look at the craft!

He is making up words, I think. Perhaps
‘wanwood’ is one of them?

Spring and Fall, 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 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

2

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

wanwood, faded or decaying woodland
leafmeal, with leaves fallen one by one

Both are listed as nonce words, with wanwood dated at 1880, the year of Hopkins’ poem, and leafmeal not dated. He might have made up both words but, with the definitions listed, it is surely a compact and powerful image.

3

“Goldengrove” and “unleaving” are also likely to be Hopkins’ words, although the former as two words is the name of a place in Wales. After Oxford GMH converted to Catholicism, took holy orders, and joined the jesuits. One of the latter two involved a period of study in a church-owned retreat/residence on the welsh border. Many of his forest poems appear to have dated from this time, iirc. At the time he was also studying welsh and at Oxford he’d had a grounding in Anglo-saxon poetry, which he continued. In the latter in particular (I don’t know welsh) the creation of new words by jamming two nouns or a noun and a modifier is very common. It’s sometimes called ‘kenning’, although in pure form they often have more of a riddling nature. The prosody of Spring and Fall also shows descent from anglo-saxon verse, as does the assonance, so I think it’s safe to lump all three together and conclude that this is what he’s up to.

This poem in particular has always seemed very JRR Tolkien to me. Hopkins went unpublished until 1917, so he could well have been the big new thing when Tolkien was forming his schtick. JRRT was a professor of Anglo-saxon, mind you, so he could also have got his influences from the horse’s mouth.

4

Thanks to both. I had to read the poem several times until I understood it.
Oh my…

Natalie Merchant has set it to music and performs it here, one of a series of poems
she’s set to music. About two-thirds of the way through the video. About 17.10. Hopkins wrote to
a friend that it should be set to music. "I’ve written a verse. It is to explain death to a child.’

http://www.ted.com/talks/natalie_merchant_sings_old_poems_to_life.html

5

Here is another poem about female children,
a lot more cheerful, that Natalie Merchant also
has set to music on her video.

maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings

10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea