Victorian Tree Poem

I had the pleasure of teaching Gerard Manley Hopkins recently, a poet who stands among one of the greats in English literature (he even coined his own poetic term: Sprung Rhythm). We honor Hopkins today for his deep-hewed tree poem: Binsey Poplars. This poem is not only a meditation on what is lost in nature when we allow instrumentalism to determine our way of being in the world, but also what we lose within ourselves.

Binsey Poplars
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

felled 1879

  My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

  All felled, felled, are all felled;

    Of a fresh and following folded rank

                Not spared, not one

                That dandled a sandalled

         Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

        

  O if we but knew what we do

         When we delve or hew —

     Hack and rack the growing green!

          Since country is so tender

     To touch, her being só slender,

     That, like this sleek and seeing ball

     But a prick will make no eye at all,

     Where we, even where we mean

                 To mend her we end her,

            When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

     Strokes of havoc unselve

           The sweet especial scene,

     Rural scene, a rural scene,

     Sweet especial rural scene.