Inversnaid
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
written 1881; published 1918

Cold Library · Open Stacks · S-004024 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/004024
Rights: Written in 1881 and first published in 1918; the author died in 1889 and the editor in 1930. Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026. Guidance, not legal advice.
Source: Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Gerard_Manley_Hopkins/Inversnaid (retrieved 2026-10-11)
Generated 2026-10-14 from https://coldlibrary.com/en/open-stacks/hopkins-inversnaid

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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.