Elegy is a poetic form to which Hopkins continually returns. In one of his most famous poems about death, "Spring and Autumn," Hopkins's speaker uses the occasion of “Goldengrove departure” to teach a child about his own mortality (2). An earlier poem, “Binsey Poplars,” Hopkins also writes about the trees to reflect on the nature of loss the natural world: mourns the destructive nature of humanity influence on nature in the description of a group of trees that have been “all cut down” (3), the main objective of the poem is to recover the lost sense of the surrounding landscape the destruction of trees to rectify humanity's violence towards the natural world and thus reconcile the poem's conflict, Hopkins writes “Binsey Poplars” as an elegy that seeks to reconstruct an echo of the trees in both his memory and the poem. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The idea of ​​inscape permeates “Binsey Poplars,” as well as a number of Hopkins’ other poems. Catherine Philips defines inscape as both “the characteristic form of a thing or species” and, “more importantly,” as “the crucial features that form or communicate inner character, essence, or 'personality.' of something” (“Introduction” XX). Furthermore, Paul Mariani defines inscape as “the underlying energetic force and deep form that holds together things like trees, bluebells, concerts, and paintings” (19). Both definitions focus on the internal nature of an object reflected in its visible and external form and identity. Another idea relating to the concept of inscape could be found in the writings of Duns Scotus, from which Hopkins derived the idea of ​​haeceittas: “thisness, individuation – that which makes this oak just this oak… something unique and separate” (Mariani 110). The idea that, for Scotus, individuation applies only to living things is particularly relevant when examining an elegy such as “Binsey Poplars.” In his journals, Hopkins specifically highlights the lost sense of inscape or 'this' he feels in relation to the felled trees of the poem: seeing a felled tree, he writes: "I longed to die and see the landscapes of the world will no longer be destroyed" ( “Notes” 359).The stanza divisions in “Binsey Poplars” reflect the tension that arises from this loss of landscapes. Hopkins' humanity in the second. The first stanza presents different aspects of nature as in tandem with each other: the “leaves” interact with the “jumping sun,” while the “shadows” of the trees interact with the “river” (2, 7, 8). Furthermore, the phrase “Meadow and river and wandering wind that envelops the weeds”, through its fusion of different elements of nature (such as wind and weeds) to describe the riverbank, certainly represents nature as a unified force (8). Furthermore, the scene is peaceful and almost Edenic. With the beginning of the second stanza, which introduces the human presence in the poem with the pronoun "we", the more specific representations of nature present in the first stanza disappear; rather, nature is presented vaguely as the “country” and the “growing green” (12, 11). The implicit result of this division, according to Hopkins, is that humanity ignores the "destruction" it causes on nature (21). This is most evident at the beginning of the second stanza in the line “Oh, if we only knew what we do” (9). Later in the stanza, he similarly states that "those who come after cannot guess" the appearance of the trees,which places emphasis on humanity's limited understanding of the meaning and beauty of each fallen tree (19). Furthermore, these two statements are the shortest independent sentences in the poem, making them stand out for their directness and simplicity; this perhaps indicates that, ironically, the only concepts the poet clearly represents and captures are his own human flaws. The simile in the second stanza also indicates human ignorance or misunderstanding in its implications of blindness: "like this bright and seeing ball / But a prick will not make an eye at all" (14-5). Because he groups himself with the rest of humanity with the word “we” in line 9, Hopkins must then face the difficulties associated with successfully reinventing the uniqueness of the poplars in writing his elegy. It is through his personal and elegiac concern with the lost landscapes of nature that Hopkins effectively reconciles the tension of the poem's subject matter. His connection to trees, exemplified by the way he refers to them in the first line as “my poplars” and as “dear to him,” provides an alternative and positive representation of the relationship between humanity and nature. Hopkins also personifies trees in the first stanza, further bridging the gap between humanity and nature. He describes "the shadow [of a tree] that swam or sank / Over the meadow and the river," which suggests that the shadows playfully and intentionally interact with the landscape as people would (7-8). The use of the word “dandled” also refers to both the movement of the branches and the act of “making a child jump up and down” on one's knee, introducing a distinct human element into the natural scene (6, “Notes "359) . The internal rhyme in this verse, “sandalled”, perhaps also vaguely connotes that the trees or shadows might somehow appear to be wearing sandals (6). nature through the evocation of a human eyeball. Through these elegiac lines, Hopkins attempts to repair the damage that humanity has done to the nature of the trees by temporarily capturing the internal uniqueness of the felled poplars. Hopkins uses repetition to show that each now “untended” tree once had a once-in-a-lifetime landscape (21) He writes that the trees are “All cut down, cut down, they are all cut down.” (3); repeating and metrically underlining the word "fell" three times, the poem recalls the individual fall of each tree and indicates its haeciettas. This constant repetition, exemplified in the last four lines of the poem which describe the "sweet and special rural scene", also creates an echo effect and suggests that, although the physical forms of the trees have disappeared, their landscapes still echo in Hopkins' memory (24). for Philips, inscape is always “the result of mental analysis and perception” and can be considered “an artist's analysis” (“Introduction” xx); consequently, viewing, analyzing, and writing about trees allows Hopkins to understand and make sense of their landscapes in his mind. Indeed, several puns in the second stanza show that Hopkins is aware that the act of writing his elegy is a way to ease his pain. The most obvious of these puns is on the word “stroke” in the phrase “ten or twelve / Strokes of havoc” (20-1). While “blow” here refers, on a literal level, to the blows of an axe, the word could also refer to the “movement of a pen” (OED). The phrase "carve or dig" contains a similar secondary meaning; the word “deepen” means not only to dig but metaphorically “to do laborious research of facts” (OED). Finally, the verb “hack,” until 1884, meant “to stammer,” which perhaps describes 307-399.