Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins Now First Published (Chap. 19)

_19 Binsey Poplars



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 únselve

         The sweet especial scene,

      Rural scene, a rural scene,

      Sweet especial rural scene.