English Poetry. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Binsey Poplars. Джерард Мэнли Хопкинс.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (Джерард Мэнли Хопкинс)

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 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 made 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’s other poems:

1. Harry Ploughman
2. Hurrahing in Harvest
3. Felix Randal
4. Barnfloor and Winepress
5. The Loss of the Eurydice

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