Ignore the accent acute, ignore the poetry

I'm a big fan of Natalie Merchant. Wonderful singer, wonderful songwriter.  These Are The Days still sends a frisson up my spinal cord, and I wish that I could write one poem as moving and thrilling. 

So, it is with a sadness that is more than sad that I must take Ms. Merchant to task on her new, lon-awaited album, Leave Your Sleep.

It's an album of children's poems set to music, though not, it seems, a children's album per se.

All well and good. You may sample the tracks on the Natalie Merchant website.

The problem is the last song, which sets to music Gerard Manley Hopkin's best know poem, Spring and Fall. 

I listened to first line of the song and had to stop.  What is being sung is approximately: "Marg'ret, are you grieving..."

This is the way I say Margaret, and probably most people too, but it not what Hopkins wrote.  He wrote:

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving

That is, approximately: MAR-gar-ET ARE you GRIEV-ing.

Does it make a difference, given the differences between music and spoken word. Yes, yes it does. My friends, it does make a difference.

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 5 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: 10 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. 15