Tuesday Poem: Inversnaid, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 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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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet and Roman Catholic priest. His poetry was heavily influenced by archaic language and Old English rhythms.

I have always loved this poem, Inversnaid. It refers to a watercourse that tumbles into Loch Lomond on its eastern shores. We stayed in Scotland not so very far away, and later passed up the west side of Loch Lomond, but didn't actually get to Inversnaid. Still, every time I heard the small stream tumble down the hillside at the hotel where we were staying, on the nearby Loch Ard, I thought of this poem.

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