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 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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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It was 1879, Hopkins had returned to a familiar stretch of the River Isis, a vivid memory from his time at Oxford - a distinct place. A coming together of trees, river and sunlight had created something unique. A place to linger, dangle sandaled feet, follow shadows - English countryside at its most benevolent. Now, however, that singular scene was destroyed, trees "hacked" and "felled" to provide brakepads for train locomotives. Now it was gone! That "sweet especial scene" denied to future generations , "after-comers" unaware of its previous "self". Those distinctive, self-defining characteristics and dynamics disrupted. Their harmony and power weakened, their "inscape" undermined. All was "unselved'!

All of us know "Binsey Poplars". Places where we are complete, calm, comforted, in harmony with the moment - a distinct sense of place that is vital and reassuring. This wonderful poem is a lament- a eulogy to the loss of that particular place, a testimony to man's capacity to hack and hew, a reflection on how easily creation is damaged. While I have experienced such singular settings in America, I remember a handful of specific places in rural Perthshire. They are intact but unavailable and I will never experience them again - they are gone! This loss is fleeting but real. Just as Hopkins felt "removed" from his English heritage, there are moments when Scotland seems distant and far, faraway.