Binsey Poplars

Binsey Polars” are trees that once stood in a meadow along the banks of the river.
Binsey Polars’ is one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s best known lyrics. It was written in 1879
shortly after he revisited the small Hamlet of Godstow near Oxford, a few miles north of Binsey,
to find that his “aspens dear” (aspens are a kind of polar tree) have been cut down. Their freshly
beautiful appearance and line arrangement just almost like a military parade or procession
makes them remarkable and this brings joy to the poet each time he sights them. The sudden
disappearance (cutting down) of the trees left the poet broken hearted. Though the identity of
the persons responsible for this evil act is not known to the poet, but he still makes it deeply
clear that they had no idea of the importance of these trees. So they had fundamentally altered
the work of nature for their selfish interest. This justifies the adage which says “when the
purpose of a thing is not known, abuse becomes inevitable. Once humanity steps in or
interferes, even to improve things, nature is completely change- forever. It also reminds us that
our responsibility to look after nature as a whole should be keenly felt. This poem also likens the
organs of sight, the eye to the beauty of the trees: one enabled us to enjoy the other. According
to the speaker, the folks (people) who came after in the future will never know it’s prior beauty,
when the Polars’ were still standing.
Within a twinkle of an eye, it took just ten or twelve blows of an axe to transform the scene
completely, which once used to be so sweet and special. Those trees are more than just
background scenery. They are dear to the speaker. He feels specially connected to them –
hence the possessive “my”. The speaker’s imagination is charged with vivid, personified
descriptions of these Binsey Polars. Although the speaker sees them as soldiers and picnickers,
but he goes beyond that. He sees these trees as symbols of a natural environment that is
fragile, tender, and irrevocably changed by human interference. It’s this big-picture view of
things that most matters to the speaker.
Without any doubt, he loved those trees, but more than he understood that those trees were just
one small part of Nature that the world will never get back. The speaker understands that even
attempt to “improve” Nature will forever change to things. Once humanity starts meddling,
Nature is altered and never the same.
The speaker is never a tree yet he feels this deep appreciation for them. This is simply because
he loves nature and understands its human responsibility to care for them. With this poem, he
encourages humanity to be conscious while dealing with nature even when we need to take
them out for other things of comfort to stand.
Poetic Devices In Binsey Polars

Language (Diction): Diction is a ” saying, expression, or word. In its original meaning, is a
writer’s or speaker’s distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story. In
its common meaning, it is the distinctiveness of speech, the art of speaking so that each word is
clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity, and concerns pronunciation
and tone, rather than word choice and style.
In this poem “Binary Polars”, the language or diction used by the poet is quite simple except for
some few onomatopoeic words and phrases which may pose problem to an average reader.
These words include ” dandle”, “growing green”, “quelled”, “quenched”, “felled”, “dandled”,
“sandalled”, “hack”, “rack”, ” folded rank”, “wind-wandering”, ” weed-winding back”, “delve “, ”
hew”, “havoc unselved” etc.
Onomatopoeia: this is the tendency in words to echo the meaning by the actual sound. Some
onomatopoeic words on the poem are: “quelled”, “quenched”, “felled”, “dandled”, “sandalled”,
“hack”, “rack”, etc. The poet exploit this sound effect to convey the meaning of the poem to the
reader.
Alliteration: there are many instances of the use of alliteration in this poem. Specifically,
alliteration is the frequent and continuous repetition of the same consonantal words or sounds in
any literary work. Some notable examples as used in the poem are: “growing green”, “where
we”, “beauty been”, “when we’ll”, “fresh/following folded”, “swam/sank”, “sleek/seeing”, etc. Their
general application in the poem heightens the musical and rhythmic quality of the poem.
Imagery: The following imagery were carefully drawn from the poem: “leaping sun”, “trees”,
“river”, “growing green”, “airy cages”, “weed-winding bank”, all help to increase our
understanding of the poem.
Personification: this is often used in poetry when a writer wishes to give some quality which
does not have any life really with attributes of human being. The poet breaks some serious
personification to describe the way the trees’ shadows used to resemble legs with sandals on
them. These shadows would dangle (or “dandle”, which is pretty much the same thing) over the
meadow, the river, and the river bank – or else it seemed as though they sunk into the water or
the grass. The poet also uses personification in referring to the natural world as “her” in line 13.
Metaphor: The idea of the trees having ‘dandled a sandalled/shadow’ is an idiosyncratic
metaphor that likens the trees’ branches to somebody hanging their feet over the edge of the
river, their sandals casting a shadow in the water.
Rhythm: Hopkins’ poem is definitely a kind that celebrates the rich diversity of English sounds
and rhythms. This is the reason it’s isn’t difficult to recognize his poems. If you find your tongue
twisting and the beat bouncing about halfway into the first line, chances are that you’ve run into
what the poet called his “spring rhythm” which was Hopkins’s way of mimicking the patterns of
human speech. That is why it can fell, well, all over the place.
Figurative Usage: Ten or twelve “strokes of havoc” is figuratively used to describe the blows of
an axe – to “unselve” the natural beauty. With the word “unserved”, the poet suggests that
cutting down these trees is not just changing the beauty of the scene. It goes deeper than that,
changing the very essence of the natural world itself.
Simile: This is an imaginative comparison between two things or objects which are in general
not alike, but in a particular aspect, are similar. One notable example of this literary device of
comparison is found in the expression, “like this sleek and seeing ball”. Nature is so sensitive
that the poet bursts out this simile and compares it (or “her”) to an eyeball (or “seeing ball” as it
is put here). With this comparison, the poet describes Nature as so fragile that any harm done to
it will make it cease to be … well, natural.
Tone / Mood: The tone of the speaker is that of regret, anger, agony, and Lamentation over his
“aspens dear” which have been cut down, while a general mood of uncertainty and disorder
prevails in the poem.
Themes
The following are themes drawn from the poem Binsey Polars
The beauty of Nature has no comparison.
The fragile nature of our natural environment.
Destruction of nature through human interference.
A lament for the “aspens trees” which have been cut down.
Setting And Arrangement of the Stanzas
A setting (or backdrop) is the time and geographic location within a narrative, either non-fiction
or fiction. It is a literary element. The setting initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story.
The setting can be referred to as story world or milieu to include a context (especially society)
beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture,
historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting
is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.
Setting is everything in “Binsey’s Polars”. It is announced in the title, it is central preoccupation

of the speaker, and it is key to the poem’s themes. In this poem, we are dealing with a micro-
setting and a macro-setting. This micro-setting which is the most immediate setting, is the
village of Binsey in Oxfordshire, England. The poet lived and worked near there, so he knew the
setting and its natural features, as one day the disappearance of a familiar stand of Polars trees
got him worried and disturbed to the extent of him writing this poem.
The macro-setting of this poem, though in a large sense is Nature itself (or “her” self, as the
poet puts it in line 17). It is not just that the poet is over-the-top in love with some trees. He sees
a bigger problem in them being cut down. Specifically, human interference in natural world
effectively stops Nature from being, well, natural. And once that happens, we can never go
back. The poet’s setting, then, is our own setting: the natural environment all around us. The
poet needs to prove to us how delicate, fragile and relevant it is to us all.

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Binsey Polars” are trees that once stood in a meadow along the banks of the river.

Poetic Devices In Binsey Polars

Setting is everything in “Binsey’s Polars”. It is announced in the title, it is central preoccupation

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