Long Live the Wilderness...

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of my favorite poets, for numerous reasons, not the least of which is his amazingly creative use of language--and his ability to coin new words/phrases to express sights, sounds, etc. This poem, called "Inversnaid" (Inversnaid is a waterfall, I think in Ireland), is one of my recent favorites. First, it's an excellent example of Hopkins's incredible language skills. And, second, I love the image he paints here...probably because I'm a nature girl. Whenever I read this poem, I feel like I'm out on a hike, taking in the sight and smell and sound of this tumbling, wild, wet stream. : )

"Inversnaid"

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 fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
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 wilderness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.