In this sonnet Hopkins reflects on the long illness and death of Felix Randal, the farrier. The poet watched this "big-boned and hardy-handsome" man decline, until he was broken by "some / fatal four disorders" and his "reason rambled . . . . " At first Randal had railed against his fate, but later, anointed by the poet-priest, he developed a "heavenlier heart" and "sweet reprieve."
The poet reflects on his role as a spiritual healer: "This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears." While the priestly tongue and touch refreshed Felix Randal in his illness, Randal's tears also touched the priest's heart, and so he is left with a sense of loss and mourning when the man dies.
The poet addresses Margaret, a young child, who grieves over the falling of leaves at Goldengrove and the turning of seasons. She may not now be able to understand or name the source of her grief. When she gets older, though, and learns more of the world ("such sights colder / By and by . . . "), she will become less sensitive to external things and more aware of the true loss in human life--the loss of oneself. "It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for."
