1844-1889, British Poet
Nothing is so beautiful as spring — when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.
Gerard Manley Hopkins – [Spring]
O if we but knew what we do when we delve or hew — hack and rack the growing green! Since country is so tender to touch, her being so slender, that like this sleek and seeing ball but a prick will make no eye at all, where we, even where we mean to mend her we end her, when we hew or delve: after-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Gerard Manley Hopkins – [Ecology]
Towery city and branching between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded.
Gerard Manley Hopkins – [Colleges and Universities]
What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins – [Wilderness]