(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 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 so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made 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 unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
He was a Roman Catholic poet and convert from Anglicanism. I like this poem, it reminds me immensely of Tolkien and the sort of awareness of urbanization that British academics were developing at the turn of the century (19th-20th).
I was just thinking the other day thought that no matter what happens to me in life, I will always be glad to think that Nature will go on. The trees are the true sovereigns of the world. When they’re all dead, we will all die.