Inversnaid - Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Larry Robinson]

Inversnaid


This dark handsome 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, the wildness and wet.

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. 

 

	- Gerard Manley Hopkins