Compare and Contrast the depiction of the countryside and the language techniques used by John Keats and Gerald Manley Hopkins in To Autumn(TM) and Binsey Poplars(TM)

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Compare and Contrast the depiction of the countryside and the language techniques used by John Keats and Gerald Manley Hopkins in ‘To Autumn’ and ‘Binsey Poplars’

The Victorian era was a time of great change.  The industrial revolution brought about a rapid expansion of towns and cities, causing the rural population to flood in, drawn by the need to find work in the factories and mills and escape the poverty of the countryside.  The countryside was disappearing quickly and writers, such as John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy, regretted its loss and constantly looked back to an idyllic, romanticised past and were concerned about capturing something that they thought would be swallowed up by the ever-expanding industrial landscape.

In ‘Binsey Poplars’, Hopkins begins by treating the trees not just as a thing of

beauty, but as his own, something deeply personal to him.

‘My aspens dear’

These beautiful trees gave shade and protected the earth from the sun by their leaves, adding to the sense of peace and tranquillity of the scene, a feeling which is heightened by Hopkins’ use of alliteration,  

‘…whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun…’

These things of beauty, Hopkins laments, have all been destroyed by man,

‘All felled, felled, are all felled.’

Whilst the repetition of the word ‘felled’ suggests that sound of the axe chopping at the trees, I believe you can almost sense the anger and despair rising in Hopkins as the words are repeated.  He then moves on to comparing the trees to soldiers who have been slaughtered in battle, of whom not one has been allowed to live,

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‘…a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one.’

Hopkins suggests that this slaughter is not just happening here but, by the way he broadens out the image, it is being repeated all over the countryside, by rivers and on meadows, as these soldiers, who a short time ago were able to dandle

‘……a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering

weed-winding bank.’

The use of personification here, coupled with alliteration seems to emphasise the idea of life continuously being extinguished.

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