Binsey Poplars
On the 13th of March 1879 Gerard Manley Hopkins, a curate at St Aloysius’ church in oxford at the time took an afternoon stroll in the country side, a place he had been cherishing since he started studying in oxford many years before. He had found that all the bountiful poplars lining the side of the river near Binsey had been cut down. Oxfords countryside had always been very close to Hopkins heart, leaving him distressed at the thought that the effervescent beauty of the countryside had been destroyed; Thus spurring the composition of the well-known poem ‘Binsey Poplars”.
The poem is composed in “sprung rhythm,” the pioneering metric form created by Hopkins himself. “In sprung rhythm the number of accents in a line is counted, but the number of syllables is not.” (enotes.com). As a result Hopkins uses this to group accented syllables together to create striking onomatopoeic effects. For example, the third line features a substantial recurrence of the accented words, “all” and “felled that catch the ear like the shocks of a hatchet on the tree trunks.
This poem holds two irregular stanzas of eight and 16 lines which grieve the loss of nature to the woodsman’s axe. The first stanza is written with the eye of the author, intimate descriptions of the trees that were once by the bank of the river are depicted.
The theme of Tragedy and loss are prominent themes throughout the poem. ‘O if we knew what we do”. Hopkins mourns the wholesale damage of the natural world. Just when the poplars are gone, so are the joyful times Hopkins spent at Oxford, days when he immersed himself in the beauty of the “sweet especial rural scene”
The tone of the poem is mournful and melancholic. Hopkins highlights the way that the poplars affected the nature around them. The aspens alter the quality of the sun and add to the decorative natural configuration along the side of the river. Cutting down the trees also destroys the order of the whole countryside. He also uses many
The poem is composed in “sprung rhythm,” the pioneering metric form created by Hopkins himself. “In sprung rhythm the number of accents in a line is counted, but the number of syllables is not.” (enotes.com). As a result Hopkins uses this to group accented syllables together to create striking onomatopoeic effects. For example, the third line features a substantial recurrence of the accented words, “all” and “felled that catch the ear like the shocks of a hatchet on the tree trunks.
This poem holds two irregular stanzas of eight and 16 lines which grieve the loss of nature to the woodsman’s axe. The first stanza is written with the eye of the author, intimate descriptions of the trees that were once by the bank of the river are depicted.
The theme of Tragedy and loss are prominent themes throughout the poem. ‘O if we knew what we do”. Hopkins mourns the wholesale damage of the natural world. Just when the poplars are gone, so are the joyful times Hopkins spent at Oxford, days when he immersed himself in the beauty of the “sweet especial rural scene”
The tone of the poem is mournful and melancholic. Hopkins highlights the way that the poplars affected the nature around them. The aspens alter the quality of the sun and add to the decorative natural configuration along the side of the river. Cutting down the trees also destroys the order of the whole countryside. He also uses many
Bibliography: http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/hopkins/section6.rhtml http://year12resourcessite.wikispaces.com/file/view/Binsey_Poplars_428946.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hjfkcVJo34 http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/The-poetry-of-Gerard-Manley-Hopkins/6/596 http://impracticalcriticism.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/gerald-manley-hopkins-binsey-poplars-2/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKj_oYiAMYQ