Poem Body
INVERSNAID (GREAT POETRY WORKSHOP)
Gerard manley Hopkins
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Comments
Lovely
Great choice! If you compare GM Hopkins & John Clare's nature poems, they both have this amazing ability to observe the characteristics inherent in nature. This piece is so rendolent of the wildness still left in places in Scotland. Other places around the world have pockets left too. In this piece he demands that we don't 'tidy' nature up...leave some of it to be untamed. The irony is, much of the british countryside has been 'managed' by farmers and tamed over many centuries.
This is a GREAT poem for all the points noted by others in our discussions. The lexis,the use of assonance, rhythm and use of scottish colloquial terms all bring this poem to life.
Thanks for sharing.
Ells x
What a good comment, you put
What a good comment, you put into words some of the feelings I have too, and explained things well, in a manner i wasn't capable of. Thank you Elis, Ann.x
GMH is one of my favourites
and this is one of his better ones. I adore his "The Starlight Night", even forgiving his psychotic use of 16 exclamation points in 14 lines!
There is little to say after Ells erudite and thoughtful comments except that I would rank this poem as Great, but perhaps not one of the All Time Greats as the theme, whilst being important, is rather simply stated and not enlarged upon. On the other hand, even without the last stanza one would be moved to preserve such places, so maybe I am wrong and this does deserve to be an ATG.
Yes Jess, this feels slightly
Yes Jess, this feels slightly 'plugged' at the end,
that's the only drawback for me too;
and in his other poetry the religious
can play a greater role than in this poem.
The two last lines could be taken away.
Then...!
I would probably choose a haiku as mine,
but thought it best to stick to this type,
there are so many one knows are great.
As aye Ann.
Im filled with amazement
That this was also on the Radio 4 poetry on sunday night same time as you posted!
What a coincidence yes.
What a coincidence yes.
And I don't have the luxury of being easily able to listen
to Radio 4 poetry, that would be nice too.
Did they say anything about the poem, or is it just readings?
LuvAnn
No just read it
For its beauty. Look upp BBC poetry please. They did John donnes Isabella last week. I always listen Sunday night. not sure what the time difference is but available on Ipod and i player as well I think xx
I don't have an iPod,
I don't have an iPad, although I do have an iPhone
I do have an iPod but I have never used it, don't know how!
Silly old bat!! I must try, love and thanks
Ann. xo
Ann
You can probably listen to Radio 4 on your Computer, not sure though:-
BBC R4 - BBC Radio 4 93.5 FM London - Listen Online
BBC R4 - BBC Radio 4 93.5 FM London - listen online, schedule, location, contact and broadcast information.
Yours Ian.T
Just gone into poetry on this site:- http://tunein.com/radio/Poetry-Off-the-Shelf-p183361/ and there are many on line parts of their broadcasts..
Hope you can find what you would love to listen to, They even have Desert Island Disc's LOL
We had canadian lit in school
before this only fathers rudimentary retake on poetry he
memorized for the one room school.
I read Milton in ninety four when I had too
cheap books from the library
but when I got into the reading of this articulated form of
writing....the visions come forth they describe is amazing!!!
Great Poem Ann! thanks for putting it up!
I remember my Aunt Margaret
I remember my Aunt Margaret going into raptures
about GMH and exactly this poem, that was in the 50's.
Ah how I wished I could have spoken with her, these
days I could have on the net, but Australia was a long way away,
as was Canada, where dear Uncle Phil lived, how I would
have loved them, letters came and went, but...sigh. The telephone
was out of the question, expensive.
Aunt Margaret and Uncle John Bishop, their conversation about poetry,
it all seemed elevated into another sphere in an higher layer of human communication,
I envied their conversations. He was a musician- Adelaide Conservatoire of Music.
Not to mention my own parents, my father dying at 72,
when I was 32. How he would have loved that I wrote poetry.
Good to hear about you dear Steven, yes Milton,
and I like Mathew Arnold,
specially the bit:-
"Ye are bound for the mountains,
ah with you let me go,
where the cold distant barrier
the vast range of snow,
the loose clouds lifts dimly
its white peaks in air,
how deep is their stillness,
ah would I were there."
That was a favourite in my teens.
along with George Meredith's
A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.
The rhythm and subject matter seduced me as a child.
never knew I'd end up in Norway. :)
Thomas Hardy, oh so many others too.
Love Ann.
Hi
Been awake for almost 30 hours so can't Really study this too closely. But that last line.........brilliant in its contrast between tame gardens (inferred) and wild natural beauty. I'll return tomorrow for closer scrutiny...........stan
This darksome...wonderful setting to start
Yes and the repetition of the
"Of wet and of wilderness? let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."
Is pure poetry,
music, life, alliteration,
onomatopoeic- poetry.
We are washed, lit up and given impetus to dance in the wilderness,
the abandoned joy of all nature's aspects, aware of the details,
as well as the whole, with the recognisable physical parallels
between our limbs and those of the landscape, so that we feel
a part of the poem like a reflection of our skeleton, inside nature.
After all we are nature too.
Horseback brown- rollrock- coop and comb -fleece-foam-
windpuff bonnet- fell frowning- despair to drowning- groins of the braes.
Oh so many allusions to things typically human at the same time
as the wild world outside all in the melting pot of his poem.
The beadbonny ash, just see the berries shining like beads,
similar to the splashes created by the water dancing in the burn.
Groins of the braes that the brook treads through-one sees
the shape of the path of the water, and identifies with it
with one's own body. Sensuous in a way.
And the beginning "This darksome...wonderful setting to start the scene with.
Hope you get some sleep all right, and dream of wonderful things, stan.
As aye Ann.
Ann
I rank this one as okay, The rhythm was surperb but, I agree the third line in the last stanza was bit forced to make the rhyme continue to flow well.. From beginning to end rhyming and rhyrhm was great. except for last to line as i've said.
I read it aloud twice and I just didn't get a good feel for this poem. It maybe just me. I never read Gerald Manley Hopkins. He seems to be a great poet.
Hi
Told you I'd be back lol. I fear this poem which is wonderful now might well drop into the land of forgotten writes due to the number of dated references. But considering that it's still held in high esteem even now, it may well be one which will live on. I also noticed that like many great poem the main body of it is used to lead to the poem's heart which is the last few lines.................stan
Yes as so many do stan,
Yes as so many do stan,
I think that's how my mind works too,
one soliloquises, and then sums it up.
GMH has given us the essence of nature's many elements,
and then points out that we are destroying them,
and how right he was...and IS. Unfortunately.
So it is actual today as much as it was then,
giving it a timelessness within the eras ahead.
I am happy with the comments.
Asy aye Ann
In industrial revolution times....
civil wars...the scavenge of war..in general
Gold mining and forestry
removed the old forests
destroyed the alluvial fan and hillsides
of once pristine valleys of many a mineral
bearing wonderland
Today up north one drives along the highway
and there is about a short walk through the old
buffer and then the shorn land
The insatiable appetite for cheap enough
pulp for paper..lamination and chips
for pressboard keeps driving the mills of
progress
We can thank enough goverments with forsight
and wealthy patrons for setting aside much
goverment owned land and private sanctuaries
turned over from philanthropists for the future
generations to utilize and appreciate
And for poets across the ages who put their
creativity to motion and discipline for the
"essence" of beauty..tamed or otherwise..
Thank You!
Even jeg nøler med å skrive
Even jeg nøler med å skrive norsk, jeg har aldrig lært det, bare talespråket,
men forstå det meste, plus dialekter.
Tror ikke han forstår! Hilsen Ann.
There is a dimension missing for me....
I didn't read the rest of the critiques so I'm not sure what the prevailing thought among the group is. I'm not well-versed in Hopkins and though I think his use of language and description do indeed put a picture in front of me, it is a picture only. I can see what he's seeing, but only as if it's on a large screen. I don't feel surrounded by nature, I feel surrounded by pictures of nature. Something visceral is missing here for me.
Ron
But for me the picture is
But for me the picture is similar to those of Samuel Palmer,
holding the mystery of nature in cheque just for a moment,
and revealing things in form and colours so entrancing.
Love Ann,
great
after a second read and better mental focus. the rhythm is still superb I dont recognized many of the unusual words so I dont have a clear picture. I like it better the second time around
Ann
Beautifully stark pictures flow, as does the poem, though I am sure there is a touch of sunshine in there,
Yours Ian.T