Friday 16 September 2016

After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been.

The beautiful old oak tree has gone forever from next door's garden. I shall miss looking at it from my bedroom window in the mornings- watching the birds flying amongst its branches, hearing the wind rustling the leaves. I keep remembering Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem "Binsey Poplars" [but great though his verses are, I do agree with the sentiment that 'I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree'] 




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 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 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. 

3 comments:

  1. It is very sad to see any tree go down, but especially an oak.

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  2. Such words, such sounds! So fabulous. Not the tree going, though; not fabulous at all.

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  3. How sad. We have a few big trees including a copper beech - I have to work hard to keep the better half from over energetic pruning of them. Have a great week. Cheers from Carole's chatter

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