Spring and Fall Sadness Quotes

The poem opens with a question, but it's a question that the speaker seems already to know the answer to. (Don't you hate it when people do that?) It seems like a simple "yes" or "no" question, but it sparks all the musings of the rest of the poem. The answer to the question is, "Yes, she's grieving over the falling of the leaves in Goldengrove, but she's also grieving over something else."

The speaker sounds almost wistful when he sighs and says, "Ah" about Margaret growing less sensitive to the sad things in nature, like the falling of leaves in autumn. Isn't it a bummer to grow up?

Even though she won't be as sensitive to nature when she gets older, Margaret will still "weep." The difference is that as an adult, she'll be able to put a name on the reason for her sorrow. So, maybe being a grown-up isn't so bad.

The speaker says that it doesn't matter that she can't put a "name" on her sorrow now. When she's "older," she'll have the same basic sources of sorrow that she had as a child—she'll just be able to label them.