The (Most) Nabobist

It’s a relief to turn to BBC Radio 4 at Sunday 16:30 GMT and always find thirty minutes of poetry. We look forward to Roger McGough of Poetry Please’s return, in the Autumn I believe. Until then it’s a series on poetry societies. This week in Ampleforth the pound will buy your glass of wine and the poem to read aloud.

31. Spring and Fall

to a young child

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
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:
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.