Inversnaid
Gerard Manley Hopkins[1844-1899]

Relevant Background

• Hopkins was a priest who wrote Nature Poetry. He celebrated beauty in the natural world. He loved the wilderness, the rough outdoor country.
• He wrote this poem more than a hundred years ago.
• Hopkins wrote in a beautiful but difficult style. He liked to invent new words and to express his feelings and views in new ways. He left out words and changed the normal word order. He liked to mix everyday expressions, local dialect and new expressions of his own.
• He liked to use striking and dramatic comparisons.
• Hopkins put a lot of sound effects into his poetry. He used a lot of unusual rhyming and alliteration.
• He enjoyed the unique shape, beauty and inner energy of nature

Summary

This is a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins about a waterfall at Inversnaid in the Scottish Highlands. Because he discovered it on a visit to Scotland, Hopkins used the Scottish word for a river: ‘burn’. Hopkins gives us a picture of the poem that is as real as a video-clip.

In the first stanza Hopkins compares the colour of the water to a horse: ‘horseback brown’. He describes the brown water as ‘roaring down’ in a torrent, a bit like a brown horse charging down a rocky road. Imagine how you could have a video clip of a galloping horse and a mountain torrent blended together. He compares the bed of the river to a road made of rock: ‘rollrock highroad’. The water is either trapped in rock-pools, ‘coop’, or can be seen rushing or combing over the rocks. The white froth of the fast river reminds the poet of sheep’s wool: ‘the fleece of his foam’. Again you can imagine the video clip. He also describes the way the river or ‘burn’ drops in a waterfall to a lake: ‘to the lake falls home’. It falls like water falling from a glass turned upside down: ‘flutes’. Can you imagine a camera trick showing a waterfall through a long stemmed glass turned upside down?

In the second stanza he compares the black water at the bottom or ‘pool’ of the waterfall to ‘pitch’ or tar. He compares the choppy water under the waterfall to a ‘broth’, reminding us of soup boiling over. He also compares the froth on this deep pool to a white lace ‘bonnet’ that has been puffed up by wind. It is then split and reduced: ‘twindles’. He compares the mixture of white and brown colours in the froth to a white and brown ‘fawn’, young deer. But Hopkins gets into a sad mood as he looks at the black water. He thinks of how the water fell ‘frowning’, into a terrible place for ‘despair’ and ‘drowning’. Can you imagine a video clip with the bonnet and then the fawn, replacements for the earlier sheep and horse?

In the third stanza, Hopkins describes the wet banks or ‘braes’ of the river or ‘brook’. He describes the way water is spattered, ‘degged’, like dew on the leaves in the grooves or ‘groins’ of the banks. Water creates variation between dull and shiny green leaves: ‘dappled’. The plants include the red berried or ‘beadbonny’ mountain ash tree, ‘ferns’ and heather, ‘heathpacks’. ‘Beadbonny’ is a lovely word invented by Hopkins to mean pretty with berries.

In the fourth stanza Hopkins worries about the destruction of the wild areas of nature. He asks himself questions about what the world would be like without the wilderness, ‘bereft’. He repeatedly pleads for wild nature to be allowed to live on: ‘O let them be left’. Imagine this stanza spoken as a voice-over while you capture a panoramic image of wild highland with a sweeping movement of the camera.

Themes

Hopkins pleads for wild nature to be allowed to survive:
 ‘O let them be left, wildness and wet’.

Hopkins celebrates energy in the natural world:
‘His rollrock highroad roaring down’. Note how the repeated Scottish ‘r’ sound reinforces the feeling of nature’s energy in the river.

Hopkins celebrates beauty in the natural world:
‘…beadbonny…’

Hopkins despairs for the future of nature:
He thinks of how the water fell ‘frowning’, into a terrible place for ‘despair’ and ‘drowning’. He worried for the future continuation of the wilderness: ‘What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness?’

Tones

Sometimes the tone is happy and full of celebration:
‘Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth…’

Sometimes the tone is dark and anxious:
‘a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning’

Sometimes the tone is full of energy:
‘His rollrock highroad roaring down’

Sometimes the tone is pleading:
‘O let them be left ’

Sometimes the tone is full of anxiety:
‘What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness?’

Imagery

Hopkins uses many comparisons:

He compares the ‘burn’ or river to a horse galloping down a rocky road. He compares the foam on the surface of the water to both a ‘fleece’ and a ‘bonnet’. He compares a water pool to a pot of soup, ‘broth’. All these comparisons are metaphors.

Note how Hopkins uses contrast, especially between darkness and light:

Consider the words ‘darksome’ and ‘pitch’ and contrast them to ‘fleece’ and ‘bonnet’.Nature can create different moods like delight and despair at the same time: ‘fleece of his foam’ is a nice image and is different from ‘darksome’. He thinks of how the water changes from ‘darksome’ into a ‘bonnet’ of froth. He views the river froth as double coloured like a fawn.

Hopkins uses compound words to point out qualities of nature:

To describe the route the river takes he makes up the word ‘rollrock’.

To describe foam on the water he makes up the word ‘windpuff-bonnet’.

To describe foam twinning [splitting] and dwindling [reducing] he makes up the word ‘twindles’.

To describe a pretty red-berried tree he uses ‘beadbonny’.

He uses images that have appealing sounds to capture beauty and energy:

‘fawn-froth’, ‘rollrock highroad roaring down’, and ‘fleece of his foam flutes’ [all of which contain alliteration]. Find more yourself.

Hopkins uses different images of movement:

‘roaring’, ‘falls’, ‘treads’, ‘rounds and rounds’.

Hopkins is good at capturing the local feeing of a place with dialect [local lingo]:

‘burn’, ‘degged’, ‘coop’, ‘braes’, ‘bonny’ and ‘flitches’.

The final image is an image of a prayer as Hopkins pleads for nature:

‘Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet’.

Sound effects

Alliteration [the repetition of first letters]:

‘fawn-froth’, ‘rollrock highroad roaring down’, and ‘fleece of his foam flutes’

Assonance [repetition of vowels]:

the ’oo’/‘ou’ sounds in ‘brook’ and ‘through’ in ‘the brook treads through’.

Rhyming [The words at the end of each pair of lines rhyme]:

look at ‘brown’ and ‘down’ in the first two lines. Find more couplets yourself!

Internal Rhyme [rhyming inside one line]:

‘burn’ and ‘brown’ in the first line: ‘This darksome burn, horseback brown’. Can you find the three internal rhymes here: ‘It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning’? [‘rown’ or roun’ occurs three times]