A draft manuscript of Victorian poet Gerard Manley
Hopkins' celebrated work Binsey Poplars has been bought at auction by Oxford's
Bodleian Libraries.
Oxford
University said it was the most significant item of the poet's work to be
auctioned in more than 40 years.
The "late
autograph draft manuscript" of the poem, it continued, had been the last
known major Hopkins manuscript in private hands.
The poem was
first published in 1918, 30 years after the poet's death.
Hopkins, who
died in 1889 at the age of 44, wrote Binsey Poplars while he was a curate at St
Aloysius's Church in Oxford.
The Oxford
alumnus penned it in response to the felling of trees running alongside the
Thames in Binsey, a village on the west side of the city.
"O if we
but knew what we do, When we delve or hew - Hack and rack the growing
green!" the poem's second verse begins.
It was first
published when his friend, the poet Robert Bridges, edited a volume of Hopkins'
poems.
The only other
known manuscripts of Binsey Poplars survive in four copies kept in the Bodleian
at the University of Oxford.
'Wonderful'
"It is
wonderful to be able to add this draft of one of his most celebrated
works," said Dr Christopher Fletcher, keeper of Special Collections at the
Bodleian.
"The
various revisions in the draft, particularly when studied alongside the other
drafts, give us a remarkable insight into how the poet crafts his passionate
lament on man's disregard for the sanctity of nature."
Despite only a
small number of his poems appearing during his lifetime, Hopkins is regarded as
one of the Victorian era's greatest poets.
His
revolutionary, "difficult" style, with its new rhythmic effects,
influenced the work of Modernist and later writers.
The Bodleian
has organised a one-day display to showcase the newly acquired manuscript
alongside the other four drafts of the poem.
The free event
takes place on 9 May.
Source: BBC
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