"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Friday, November 17, 2017

Gerard Manley Hopkins - "Inversnaid": An Epitaph Worthy of Environmentalists


In my readings of Hopkins yesterday I came across a verse which might be used as an epitaph on a tombstone for any of those nature loving environmentalists amongst us. I found it in "Inversnaid" and it can be found in the last four lines of the verse. I've also included a commentary to the verse as a help to understanding it. Enjoy.

R.E. Slater
November 17, 2017



"Inversnaid," 
by 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.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins




Commentary on Inversnaid by Hopkins
"The sensation of a stream"

Hopkins describes the different parts of a highland stream, using word-painting to bring out its wildness, hoping that that wildness might never be destroyed. Mountain burn itself is a mountainside brook which is the focus of the poem as the poet witnesses a mountain stream rushing down the hillside and emptying itself into the lake below.

Hopkins describes it mainly from the bottom upwards, which is how he would have experienced it, having arrived on the lakeside, either by road or, more probably, by ferry. He emphasizes its untameable force as it pours over a waterfall, or series of falls, interspersed with whirlpool-like depths at the base of the cliffs.

Stanza 1 describes the final fall of the stream, or burn, in its tumultuous rush into the lake;

Stanza 2 describes the movement of the water in a deep pool formed under the cliffs;

Stanza 3 moves to higher ground, the plateau on top of the moor, so the stream is smaller and flowing less violently. All the time, Hopkins is trying to paint detailed pictures of each part of the stream.

The final stanza 4 is a repeated sort of prayer: ‘Let them…O let them….'. It is not clear who is to do the letting:
  • Is it a prayer to God or to his fellow humans?
  • Is it a prayer at all, or just a heartfelt desire?
  • Or do they come to the same thing?

Certainly, it is an unusual finish for Hopkins, but very memorable in its simplicity. It only takes a few minutes to learn by heart.

Investigating Inversnaid:
  • Locate words and phrases that personify the stream.
  • Try learning the last stanza by heart.




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