'Inversnaid' by Gerard Manley Hopkins (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

The Falls of Inversnaid are on the banks of Loch Lomond, Scotland. The poem was written in 1881.

Gerard Manley Hopkins didn't publish much poetry in his lifetime and that was by choice. He was a complicated man.

A burn is a stream or brook. Hopkins invented many of his words: "twindles" is maybe a combination of "twines" and "dwindles" - "beadbonny" and "rollrock" are similar. Rock and Roll are a popular combination.

It doesn't follow a traditional metrical pattern, but it's not Free Verse. The accents are over words that he wanted to stress in different ways. This was his own discovery too, called "sprung rhythm."

There's a BBC reading here:

The photographs of Inversnaid are from these sources:

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 fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
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.

[soapmode]

I still come back to this one. It's a fine reading.

[GeneralJumbo]

Billy Connelly brought me here, and I thank him for treading me towards this passage. The final four lines sum up my love of travel both home and abroad. Yes. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet, for I seek solitude in such lovely earth constructs.

[jellysnacc]

your voice is awesome!! this poem is so beautiful, it just captures perfectly the wonder of nature... thanks for posting : )