Inversnaid (1881)
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.
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.
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.
I was very excited to re-discover this poem last week thanks to Scottish/Icelandic writer Sally Magnusson who mentioned it on Radio 3.
What a tour de force.
What a tour de force.
This foaming, roiling, celebratory poem shows a side of Gerard Manley Hopkins (GMH) that we don't see enough of.
When I was studying Hopkins at school it was all about the "Terrible Sonnets" and his depressions. The language is so startling and rich that it makes me despair of ever writing a decent poem. And look at the date it was written!
GMH was way ahead of his time in every way.
Inversnaid could well be a poster poem for the current environmental movement. We do need the wildness and wet, the weeds and the wilderness. I live in a part of Scotland where there are no water-shortages and one is never far from the sound of water. Such a privilege. Many parts of Britain have lost their wild places.
I was inspired by news coverage this week of the re-introduction of water voles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045644w
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/26/ratty-begins-fightback-water-voles-still-desperate-need-help/
Apparently Scotland has some rather exotic black water voles. I am still on the look-out for one.
Why this passion for the water vole? Well apart from its need for wilderness and wet that is a characteristic we share, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is one of my favourite novels. Who could forget Urk and his perverted love of Elfine and the wee beasties? 'I put a cross in water-vole's blood on her feedin' bottle when she was an hour old, to mark her for mine...'
I love this novel because, apart from the fact that it makes me laugh, it taught me that it was OK to mock Great Literature. Mostly a parody and de-bunking of Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1924) that even won a literary prize in its day, it also reminds me of the humourless and bleak qualities of D.H. Lawrence at his worst and Thomas Hardy ditto. Both writers have their sublime moments but they also plumbed the depths of joyless pretension as far as I am concerned.
So water-voles are a part of our culture in every sense of the word and I am thrilled that their numbers are recovering.
We need another poem at this point
Sadly I can't find one worth printing about water voles but let's return to the superb Gerard Manley Hopkins. (He did have a sense of humour and one of my favourite anecdotes about him comes from the time when he was a trainee priest and wanted to get into a room where a long meeting of his seniors was being held. It was claimed that he blew pepper through the keyhole to break up the meeting.)
Yorkshire was getting a bit short of water voles
so it released about 100 back into the wild in 2016 and many other wildlife trusts are working hard to restore habitat and increase populations again.
I was inspired by news coverage this week of the re-introduction of water voles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045644w
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/26/ratty-begins-fightback-water-voles-still-desperate-need-help/
Apparently Scotland has some rather exotic black water voles. I am still on the look-out for one.
Why this passion for the water vole? Well apart from its need for wilderness and wet that is a characteristic we share, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is one of my favourite novels. Who could forget Urk and his perverted love of Elfine and the wee beasties? 'I put a cross in water-vole's blood on her feedin' bottle when she was an hour old, to mark her for mine...'
I love this novel because, apart from the fact that it makes me laugh, it taught me that it was OK to mock Great Literature. Mostly a parody and de-bunking of Precious Bane by Mary Webb (1924) that even won a literary prize in its day, it also reminds me of the humourless and bleak qualities of D.H. Lawrence at his worst and Thomas Hardy ditto. Both writers have their sublime moments but they also plumbed the depths of joyless pretension as far as I am concerned.
So water-voles are a part of our culture in every sense of the word and I am thrilled that their numbers are recovering.
We need another poem at this point
Sadly I can't find one worth printing about water voles but let's return to the superb Gerard Manley Hopkins. (He did have a sense of humour and one of my favourite anecdotes about him comes from the time when he was a trainee priest and wanted to get into a room where a long meeting of his seniors was being held. It was claimed that he blew pepper through the keyhole to break up the meeting.)
The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Words for wellbeing. Hopkins thought this one of his best and I agree with that. My favourite line has to be, 'My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird...'. This is a man familiar with the black dog of depression and natural beauty was for him a huge healing force.
I hope you are able to take a walk on the wild side when you need solace.
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.
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