It is Margaret I mourn for

I never wrote a fan letter in my life, but over the last few months I have thought seriously about writing to Madeleine L'Engle. A brief but heated argument about A Wrinkle in Time reminded me of how much L'Engle's books have meant to me, both as a reader and as a teacher, and I wanted to offer my hero belated thanks.

After learning of Ms. L'Engle's death, I deeply regret that I never wrote that letter. I doubt seriously that my letter would have made much of an impression (it would have been a mere drop in an ocean of fan mail, I'm sure), but I would feel easier in my mind. As it is, I am left with an enormous debt, which could never be repaid but which should have been acknowledged.

Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child" reminds me that the sadness I feel at Ms. L'Engle's death is mostly for myself and not for a woman who lived a full and rich life and is now beyond the reach of grief or pain.

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.