The Binsey Poplars
Gerard Manley Hopkins
'Not since the Binsey Poplars, those Hopkins-harrowing topplers,
Fell or were felled by the fiend of eld that wishes old England ill...'
The Binsey Poplars
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 & river & 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.
Poplars not far from Oxford
My poplars! You with airy grids thick-grown
To chloroform with chlorophyll Sir Sun,
Him bounding, you now all cut down, cut down;
Yours was a vigorous and tight-knit rank,
To nought now, no, you shrank,
That swung a so low-slung
Shadow that swam or sank
On turf and brook and wind-wild woodbin’d bank.
O did you and I but know how to stop
Who dig and chop –
Hack and rack all things that natural grow!
So soft is country’s naturism
To touch, inasmuch as lissom –
Just so, this smooth and sighting ball:
But a prick, and it’s not optical –
Where we, even where we pretend
We’d mend her, we end her,
When we delve, when we hew:
Today, tomorrow, coming folk won’t know
How much glory has had to go.
Just six and six, or six and two and two
Struck blows of havoc could undo
That singular most mystic
Vista rustic, vista rustic,
That vista rustic, oh, most mystic.
'Let's see whether he needed the letter E.' Yes, these verses here'll be E-less
- except the segment where he entered twelve E's, then seven yet:
he preferred these letters themselves.
Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès
