“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

"Binsey Poplars", stanza 2
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

English poet 1844–1889

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