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Inversnaid By: Jane, Jack, Magda and Rhiannon
Inversnaid. 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.
The Life of Gerard Manley Hopkins. • Hopkins was born in Stratford, Essex in 1844. The eldest of eight children and the son of a prosperous middle class family - his father was also a writer. • He was educated at Highgate School, where he won the poetry prize. He went up to Balliol College, Oxford in where he met and became very close friends with Robert Bridges who was later to become Poet Laureate. He obtained a First in 'Greats'. • He was brought up as an Anglican, but later converted to Catholicism and soon became a novitiate of the Society of Jesus. On becoming a Jesuit he burnt all the verses he had written and 'resolved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession, unless by the wish of my superiors'. Fortunately, his superiors did wish him to write and so he wrote The Wreck of the Deutschland. • He died in Dublin of typhoid fever in 1889. • Hopkins’ work was not published during his lifetime, although a few of his works had appeared in anthologies. • He was a poetic innovator and used what he termed 'sprung rhythm', which is an attempt to reconcile speech rhythms with poetic emphasis, which is scanned using stresses rather than syllables. • He was a modernist before the movement took off and despite living in Victorian times, seems better suited among the later poets that he influenced greatly. • Inversnaid is a small village near Loch Lomond and is set in beautiful surroundings. Hopkins wrote the poem 'Inversnaid' during his stay in Glasgow after having visited Loch Lomond.
The Influence of the poets background on meaning, style and content. • Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit, and his poetic themes centre around faith, doubt and reason. At the end of the poem, he asks a question, ” What would the world be, once bereft of wet and of wilderness?” This suggests that he loves the wet and wild of the burn of Inversnaid. • His approach to religion and his style of writing are linked in that he was very unconventional about both things. The language he used in his poems was much more adventurous for his day than the language of other poets at the time. • His unconventional nature is also apparent through his love of the wild, wet wilderness which is what he is describing in the poem. Most people at the time would not admire and love the wet and wild like he did. His love of Scotland, where this poem is set, is a bit like Romantic poets’ love of the Lake District.
How the poets’ feelings and thoughts are reflected in the poem. • Though the poet doesn’t actually say that he loves Inversnaid, it is clear that he is very passionate about it through the language he uses. • For example, he shows he admires the landscape, ”darksome” “roaring”. He uses passionate language such as, “Despair” and “wilderness”. • He is obviously someone who is interested by faith, doubt and reason-he was a Jesuit. This is shown in the poem at the end where he asks a question, “What would the world be, once bereft of wet and of wildness?” • He also seems to have an unconventional nature which may explain his slightly sceptical feelings. This is apparent through his love of wilderness which is unconventional for his day. • Bereft means robbed of a loved one and he says “once bereft of wet and of wildness” so by linking the two, he indicates that for him, the wet and wild are lovely, and so they should be for everyone else too.
Vocabulary. • darksome (line 1) mixture of 'dark' and 'handsome‘ • burn (line 1) small streamcoop (l. 3) • "enclosed hollow" (definition from Hopkins' notebook) • comb (l. 3) rippling stretch of water • Flutes (l. 4) makes a fluted or frilled shape • windpuff-bonnet (l. 5) froth which sits on the water like a hat; or rides it like a sail (an older meaning of bonnet) • fawn (l. 5) combines 'yellowish-brown' and 'caressing'; also suggests faun, a god of the wilderness • twindles (l. 6) a mixture of 'twists', 'twitches' and 'dwindles‘ • fell-frowning (l. 7) frowning fiercely, and also reflecting the fell-side • Rounds (l. 8) mixture of 'curves' and 'surrounds'; 'turns and answers back'; and 'whispers' (an obsolete meaning) • Degged (l. 9) sprinkled (Scots dialect) • groins (l. 10) curved edges • braes (l. 10)steep bank or hillside (Scots dialect) • heathpacks (l.11) 'heather clumps' + 'heath flocks‘ • flitches (l.11) mixture of flitches= 'hunk or side of meat' and flitches='flicks or streaks' • beadbonny (l. 12) beautiful (bonny) with beads • bereft (l.13) robbed of a loved-one
