Binsey Poplars - As it is National Poetry Day

12.15.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 7th Oct 2008

felled 1879

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew-

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being só slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc únselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

By Gerard Manley Hopkins