The Full Text of “Binsey Poplars”
felled 1879
1My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
2 Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
3 All felled, felled, are all felled;
4 Of a fresh and following folded rank
5 Not spared, not one
6 That dandled a sandalled
7 Shadow that swam or sank
8On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
9 O if we but knew what we do
10 When we delve or hew—
11 Hack and rack the growing green!
12 Since country is so tender
13 To touch, her being só slender,
14 That, like this sleek and seeing ball
15 But a prick will make no eye at all,
16 Where we, even where we mean
17 To mend her we end her,
18 When we hew or delve:
19After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
20 Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
21 Strokes of havoc únselve
22 The sweet especial scene,
23 Rural scene, a rural scene,
24 Sweet especial rural scene.
The Full Text of “Binsey Poplars”
felled 1879
1My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
2 Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
3 All felled, felled, are all felled;
4 Of a fresh and following folded rank
5 Not spared, not one
6 That dandled a sandalled
7 Shadow that swam or sank
8On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
9 O if we but knew what we do
10 When we delve or hew—
11 Hack and rack the growing green!
12 Since country is so tender
13 To touch, her being só slender,
14 That, like this sleek and seeing ball
15 But a prick will make no eye at all,
16 Where we, even where we mean
17 To mend her we end her,
18 When we hew or delve:
19After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
20 Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
21 Strokes of havoc únselve
22 The sweet especial scene,
23 Rural scene, a rural scene,
24 Sweet especial rural scene.
-
“Binsey Poplars” Introduction
-
"Binsey Poplars" is Gerard Manley Hopkins's memorial for a row of riverside trees cut down in 1879. The poem's speaker—a voice for Hopkins himself—is appalled to discover that the "aspens" he loved have been unceremoniously "felled." This, he laments, is what happens whenever humanity meddles with nature. In treating the natural world as a mere resource, or even as something to "mend" rather than leave to its own devices, people are forever doing irreparable damage, "unselv[ing]" (or destroying the identity of) the places they exploit. Like much of Hopkins's poetry, "Binsey Poplars" wasn't published until years after his death: it first appeared in the posthumous collection Poems (1918).
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Summary
-
My beloved aspen trees, whose airy branches held back or dampened the beams of sunlight in their leaves—they're cut down, they're cut down, they've all been cut down. Out of a long, lively, even row of trees, not a single one has survived: not a one of any of these trees, which once cradled my sandal-wearing summertime shadow as I swam or lay at ease in the meadow, in the river, and along the breezy, weedy riverbank.
Oh, if only we knew what we were doing when we dig things up or cut things down—when we chop at and torment the living green world! For the countryside is as fragile and delicate as an eyeball. Just as a mere poke can blind an eye forever, even our best-intentioned changes to the landscape spoil it, whenever we cut things down or dig things up. People who come here later will never be able to imagine how beautiful the places we destroyed once were. Ten or twelve—a mere ten or twelve chaotic axe-blows destroy the identity of this beautiful, beloved landscape. Oh, my countryside, my beloved, most special countryside.
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Themes
-
Humanity's Abuse of Nature
“Binsey Poplars” records Gerard Manley Hopkins's heartbreak after a row of riverside trees in Binsey (a hamlet just outside Oxford) was cut down. Appalled to discover that his beloved “aspens” have been “felled,” the poem’s speaker reflects that nature is as fragile as it is lovely. It takes only a moment of human thoughtlessness to “unselve” (or destroy the identity of) a whole landscape. Nature, this poem suggests, offers people boundless beauty and comfort—a gift that humanity often thoughtlessly abuses.
Mourning a row of chopped-down trees that once shaded a stretch of river near Oxford, the speaker (whom readers can interpret as Hopkins himself) sounds as devastated as if he were grieving a person: “all felled, felled, all are felled,” he cries. He misses these trees, not because he used to feel that they “dandled” (or lovingly rocked) him like a child in their lovely shadows, but because without them the landscape itself seems “unselve[d],” robbed of its peculiar personality. These trees, he feels, were kindly beings that made the meadows around Binsey what they were. Not just he but the whole “sweet especial rural scene” is injured by their loss.
By treating these trees only as a resource or as unimportant ornaments to be rearranged or discarded, the woodcutters reveal just how greedy, selfish, and short-sighted humanity can be toward nature. As the speaker reflects, it takes only a moment of human thoughtlessness—a mere “ten or twelve” strokes of an axe—to create utter “havoc” in what was once a place of lovely, comforting harmony. Just as one “prick” destroys an eye’s power of sight, a few lopped trees can change a landscape so radically that “after-comers cannot guess” how beautiful it once was. When people “hew and delve” (or chop and dig), exploiting nature for material wealth, they leave irreversible ruin in their wake.
This poem thus becomes a lament not just over a “sweet especial rural scene” that the speaker loved, but over humanity’s relationship to the natural world in general. The speaker’s lost aspens are figures for all the natural beauty that humanity has carelessly spoiled.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Binsey Poplars”
-
Lines 1-3
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;The first two lines of "Binsey Poplars" could almost be the opening of a Romantic ode: a nature-worshiping paean to a particularly beautiful stand of poplars (a kind of tree also known as aspen) growing alongside the River Isis in Oxford.
But this isn't an early-19th-century stroll through the countryside. It's later, "1879," the height of the Victorian era and the Industrial Revolution—and the trees the speaker sings of have been "felled," chopped down. This poem, which tells a true story from Gerard Manley Hopkins's years in Oxford, will be a lament both for these particular trees and for a whole maimed, exploited landscape.
The poem's speaker loved these lost trees deeply: they were "his aspens dear," his familiar friends. These trees, the speaker recalls, gently restrained the sunlight, seeming to capture it in their branches. Listen to the lyrical repetitions he uses here:
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,These repeated sounds evoke the trees' rhythmic movements and the way their leaves held the light:
- The gentle epizeuxis and alliteration of "quelled, / Quelled or quenched" evokes the back-and-forth sway and rustle of trees in a light wind.
- The alliteration and assonance of "quenched in leaves the leaping sun," besides being just plain euphonious, mirror the leaves' action in language: by connecting the "leaves" to the "leaping sun," it suggests the way that leaves in sunlight seem to fill up with sun, soaking up the light at the same time as they shade the ground below.
All the beauty, peace, and pleasure of this scene comes to a sharp and painful ending in the third line:
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Repeating those same words over and over, the speaker sounds as if he's in shock, trying to come to terms with what just can't be true: All of them? All gone? (Readers might even hear an echo of Macbeth here: the speaker's repetitions sound a lot like Macduff's disbelieving grief when he learns that all his children have been murdered.)
A change in the poem's rhythms makes this moment even more shocking. Like much of Hopkins's verse, this poem uses sprung rhythm, a kind of accentual meter in which lines use a certain number of stresses, but no set number or pattern of unstressed syllables. Here's how that meter unfolds in these lines:
- The first line of the poem is deceptive. It might make readers expect the whole poem to be written in neat iambic pentameter—lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, like this: "My as- | pens dear, | whose air- | y cag- | es quelled."
- The second line breaks from that pattern, using trochees (the opposite foot to an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm), but still following a regular five-beat pentameter pattern: "Quelled or | quenched in | leaves the | leaping | sun."
- The third line still uses five strong stresses. But now strong stresses are just about all the line has. The gentle pulse of stress and unstress is gone, replaced by five gut punches (or axe-blows): "All felled, felled, are all felled."
- Throughout the poem, Hopkins will use flexible patterns of stresses to capture the agony of this great loss. Keep an eye out for the places his rhythms change.
The speaker feels this tree-cutting like a death. The rest of the poem will be his elegy both for these trees and for the landscape around them—a countryside world that will never be the same again.
-
Lines 4-8
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. -
Lines 10-12
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green! -
Lines 13-20
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. -
Lines 21-25
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Symbols
-
The Poplars
The trees the speaker laments in this poem were very real. As the note at the beginning of the poem says, an ancient stand of poplars that shaded the riverside path near Binsey was cut down in 1879. (Readers might be happy to know that those poplars have since been replanted—though, as Hopkins points out, that doesn't bring the original trees back.)
These real trees also carry symbolic weight, representing all the natural beauty that humankind thoughtlessly destroys—whether for profit or because they've had a bright idea about how they can improve the landscape with their own little design ideas. Even the best-intentioned meddling with nature, the speaker sorrows, can only destroy what it means to "mend": the indescribably lovely innate character of the landscape.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Personification
By personifying both the lost aspens and the countryside at large, the speaker suggests that the natural world is a living thing: conscious, loving, and all too easily destroyed.
The speaker remembers the fallen aspens as affectionate protectors. Holding up the "airy cages" of their branches, they "quelled or quenched" the sunbeams in leaves, creating a shady haven that "dandled" the people who walked below—that is, that gently rocked or bounced them. The image of the trees cradling and rocking the speaker's "sandalled" shadow evokes branch-shadows swaying in a light wind at the same time as it paints a picture of a loving parent cradling a baby. To be under the aspens' gentle shade was to feel cared for, the speaker remembers.
Of course, that's all over now: the aspens are gone. The speaker laments not just those trees, but the countryside in general, which people are all too apt to thoughtlessly destroy. "Country," he says:
[...] is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,[...]
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,Here, the whole countryside is a living woman, a goddess who contains many little goddesses. The personified trees were part of the bigger life of a personified world. The speaker's vision of nature starts to feel fractal: every little part of the living world is itself a living world. Kill any one tree, and you break the pattern, "end[ing]" the life of the whole countryside.
Through personification, then, the speaker insists that the natural world is one big kindly, living, beautiful being—a caring parent that humanity callously mistreats.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Simile
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Repetition
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Alliteration
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"Binsey Poplars" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Aspens
- Quelled
- Quenched
- Felled
- A fresh and following folded rank
- Dandled
- Delve
- Hew
- Rack
- Mend
- Unselve
- Especial
-
A kind of tree known for its beautiful shimmering leaves. Also known as a poplar.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Binsey Poplars”
-
Form
"Binsey Poplars" is built from two irregular stanzas: one with eight lines and one with sixteen. (Some versions, however, divide the long second stanza into two separate seven- and nine-line stanzas.)
- In the version we're looking at, the first stanza records the speaker's initial shock and grief at discovering his beloved riverside aspens have been chopped down. Its comparative brevity suggests that he's still reeling from the discovery.
- The second stanza becomes a lament for the way that people treat nature in general. Even with the best intentions, the speaker sighs, people destroy the countryside the instant they meddle with it.
-
Meter
"Binsey Poplars" uses a variation on the meter Hopkins is famous for: sprung rhythm.
Rather than using regular metrical feet like trochees or iambs, which dictate both the number of stresses and the number of syllables in a line, sprung rhythm only counts the number of stresses in a line. (The accents over certain words here show the places where Hopkins wanted to be especially sure his readers placed a stress: think of them as his musical notation.)
For example, count the stresses in each of the first three lines:
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;There are always five strong stresses per line here, but the number of unstressed syllables varies wildly. Notice the emotional effect: after the gentler, more spaced-out stresses in the first two lines, the news that the trees are "all felled" comes in a line that's nearly all stressed, so each word hits like an axe-blow.
However, Hopkins doesn't stick to five-stress sprung rhythm all through this poem. Other lines range from two stresses to seven: compare "To mend her we end her" to "On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank." There's so much variation here that the poem turns into something more like a powerfully rhythmic free verse. The lines stretch or contract to mirror the speaker's feelings, expanding with his memories of gentle summer strolls and shrinking as he describes the cruel finality of "what we do / When we delve or hew."
The rhythm here thus ends up feeling as sensitive, thoughtful, and naturalistic as the speaker's language is heightened and musical. Metrical experiments like these are part of the reason that some claim Hopkins as a modernist before his time.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Binsey Poplars" rings with rhymes, but its rhyme scheme isn't a clear or a simple one. Mapped out, it runs like this:
ABACBDCC EEFGGHHFGIFIIFFF
All this wild end rhyme isn't orderly, but it is intensely musical: the poem's harmonies sprout at unpredictable but graceful angles, like twigs.
What's more, Hopkins mixes his end rhymes with intense internal rhyme. Listen to the sounds of this lament, for just one example:
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—Each of these /oo/ rhymes also lands on a strong stress, making the speaker's despair and dismay feel even more emphatic.
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Speaker
-
The speaker here is Hopkins himself. Hopkins, who studied at Oxford and later served there as a Jesuit priest, used to love walking along the riverside in Port Meadow, a stretch of fields to the west of town. On his way past the tiny village of Binsey, he discovered one day that a row of riverside poplars (a kind of tree also known as an aspen) had been cut down without warning. This poem is the true story of his sorrow; he felt the loss of his "aspens dear" as acutely as a death.
Hopkins deeply loved nature, seeing it as one of the clearest and loveliest ways that God speaks to humanity. Here, he argues (like a Romantic) that nature has a deeper wisdom than humanity, and warns that people try to "mend" nature at their peril: trying to manage, exploit, or improve what's already perfect, people can only cause harm.
-
-
“Binsey Poplars” Setting
-
"Binsey Poplars" is set, as its title suggests, in Binsey, a hamlet on the outskirts of Oxford. At the edge of the green fields of Port Meadow, beside the River Isis (that is, the section of the Thames that flows through Oxford), Binsey was (and is) a lovely "rural scene," nestled into the landscape.
The speaker is thus all the more dismayed when some unknown axe-wielder chops down a row of graceful old poplars that once sheltered the river and offered dappled shade to swimmers and wanderers. Such an assault on the "growing green," he feels, is an affront to the whole world.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Binsey Poplars”
-
Literary Context
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a poet of deep and ecstatic faith. Born into a stern Protestant family, he converted to Roman Catholicism as an Oxford undergraduate. Much to his parents' horror, he later became a Jesuit priest. Though he'd always loved writing poetry, he burned many of his early works upon his ordination, feeling that he should turn away from art to devote himself fully to God. His superiors, however, wisely encouraged him to see his poetry as a means of worship. The resultant body of sensuous, poignant poetry reflects Hopkins's fervent belief that God suffuses nature.
In some ways, Hopkins was a poet of his time. His sad nostalgia for a pre-industrial England (and horror at humanity's exploitative relationship to nature) is also evident in the work of other Victorian poets—for example, Christina Rossetti (whom Hopkins befriended) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson—as well as in the work of novelists like Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
But in other ways, Hopkins's poetry seems to both anticipate the future and connect to the deeper past:
- Hopkins's innovative style, with its freewheeling sprung rhythm and its richly interwoven sounds, is often seen as a precursor of the modernist free verse that would arise in the early 20th century.
- Meanwhile, Hopkins's fervent, religious love of nature hearkens back to both the pantheistic Romantics of the early 19th century (like Wordsworth) and the passionately Christian Metaphysical poets of the 17th century (like Herbert).
Perhaps critics are particularly inclined to think of Hopkins as a proto-modernist because the bulk of his work wasn't published until 1918, when Hopkins's friend (and fellow poet) Robert Bridges released the posthumous collection Poems. This book would deeply influence writers in the 20th century and beyond, from W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas to T.S. Eliot.
Historical Context
In 1879, when Hopkins wrote this poem, Britain was in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological advancement in both manufacturing and transportation. Of the many dramatic changes this era brought about in British society—a decline in rural populations, a rumble of socialist protest—most pressing for Hopkins was the harm to nature: exploitative mining and logging, air and water pollution from factories, and the expansion of urban and suburban spaces into what was once countryside.
Many Victorian artists and writers (and people from all walks of life, for that matter) viewed this destruction of nature with alarm and despair. For Hopkins, a pious Jesuit priest who saw the natural world as a manifestation of the divine, the ugly rapacity of industrialization was particularly painful. "Binsey Poplars" records both a personal grief and a general outcry against the cavalier exploitation of irreplaceable beauty.
-
-
More “Binsey Poplars” Resources
-
External Resources
-
A Brief Biography — Visit the Poetry Foundation's website to learn more about Hopkins's life and work.
-
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
-
The Poem in Manuscript — Take a look at one of Hopkins's drafts of the poem in his own handwriting (and get a sense for how this poem developed and changed).
-
Hopkins's Legacy — Find more Hopkins resources (and a community of ardent Hopkins-lovers) at the Official Gerard Manley Hopkins Website.
-
A Hopkins Documentary — Watch a short documentary about Hopkins.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-
