Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, May 7, 2025.

Today's poem is from Gerard Manley Hopkins, and it's called Binsey Poplars.

And full confession, it's been probably less than a year since we last featured this poem on the daily poem, but it's a great poem.

And there are a couple of excellent reasons for bringing it back today.

One is purely circumstantial.

I have some students who are reciting this poem in class this week, so it's been on my mind.

But two, it is a great companion to Monday and Tuesday's poems.

It's probably a direct artistic descendant from Cooper's The Poplar Field, which was written about 100 years earlier.

And it also bears some striking stylistic similarities to Annabelle Lee by Poe,

in that it makes use of some of the same repetitions to express this sense of unbroken grief or irreparable loss.

So keep an ear out for some of those common features.

I'll read the poem once, offer a few more comments, and then read it one more time.

Binsey Poplars. Feld 1879

My Aspen's Deer, whose airy cages quelled, quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, all felled, felled, felled, are all felled. Of a fresh and following folded rank,

not spared, not one that dandled a sandaled shadow that swam or sank on a meadow and river

and wind-wandering weed-winding bank. Oh, if we but knew what we do when we delve or hue, hack and rack the growing green.

Since country is so tender to touch, her being so slender, that like this sleek and seeing ball,

but a prick will make no eye at all. Where we, even where we mean to mentor, we end her. When we hue or delve,

aftercomers cannot guess the beauty bin. Ten or twelve. Only ten or twelve strokes of havoc

unsolved the sweet especial scene. Rural scene, a rural scene, sweet, a special rural scene.

You can definitely pick out right away some of the direct inspirations from Cooper's poem about poplars that have been chopped down.

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