Analysis of Inversnaid

Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)



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 fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
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 wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.


Scheme AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 11111 111101 0100101111 10110111 0110111 1011001 10111110 110101110 111111 10110110111 101111 0011111001 11011101 110101111 111111001 1101001001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 644
Words 115
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 126
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 28, 2023

34 sec read
383

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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