Binsey Poplars
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 to do
When we delve or hew –
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so 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.
About this poem
“Binsey Poplars” was written by Hopkins in 1879 and published for the first time in “Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins” (Humphrey Milford, 1918).
About Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844. One of the Victorian era’s prominent poets, his collections of posthumously published poems include “Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins” (Humphrey Milford, 1918) and “The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins” (Oxford University Press, 1959). He died on June 8, 1889.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
This poem is in the public domain. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
