Poems for study » Binsey Poplars » Synopsis of Binsey Poplars
In March 1879, whilst stationed in Oxford for parish duties, Hopkins wrote to his ex-schoolteacher E. W. Dixon, ‘I have been up to Godstow this afternoon. I am sorry to say the aspens that line the river are every one felled.’ Godstow is a few miles to the north of Oxford along the river, whilst Binsey is between the two places. Aspens are the sort of poplars whose leaves turn and seem to shift colour as the colour differs on upper and lower surfaces of leaves. This poem was a result of the sad sight. More on the destruction of nature?
More on the destruction of nature: Many people are deeply saddened at the destruction of nature, especially when a particular place held dear has been torn down for a road, or houses, or for no obvious reason at all. Artists are particularly sensitive to this. Almost a hundred years before, another English poet who loved the English countryside, William Cowper, wrote a poem, ‘The Poplar Fields’, grieving similarly. Poplars are striking trees, as anyone who has seen some of the French Impressionists’ depiction of them will testify.
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.
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