Binsey Poplars is composed of two stanzas and employs a unique technique developed by Hopkins known as “sprung rhythm,’ a type of metre created from the rhythms noted in daily music and spoken language. In sprung rhythm, the first syllable is frequently stressed, whereas the multiple unstressed syllables may anticipate it. He also makes extensive use of internal rhyme and compound adjectives, lending the poem a sense of urgency that effectively depicts his anguish and horror at the loss of his beloved trees, which have been felled.

Binsey Poplars is written almost like an elegy or statement of sadness for the departed. Gerard Manley Hopkins inscribed the poem with “destroyed 1879” in reference to the felled trees. To build the mood of particular grief, he commences the poem with the language of fondness, “My aspens dear,” portraying the trees as if they were departed loved ones.

Hopkins contrasts his love for the trees with harsh language and imagery that describes the damage done to them. He constantly mentions that the trees were “quelled,” which means that their lives were violently ended, and he emphasises how they all fell, “Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping light/All felled, felled, all are felled” (2–3). The narrator compares the falling trees to a well-coordinated marching army heading into combat to perish “following folding rank/Not spared, not one” in the lines (4–5).

The harsh image of the trees laying in lines on the ground like dead people in the poem is juxtaposed with the lovely summery sight of trees dancing in the breeze, making whimsical shadows on the river bank. According to Hopkins (6–8), not a single tree “that dandled a sandalled/shadow that swam or sunk/On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank” was saved. The sight of a person’s sandaled feet casting a shadow as they bounce up and down conveys a sense of sensitivity. It typifies how the trees move to create lovely shadows on the lake. The length of the final stanza’s final line suggests that a seemingly endless row of trees was “felled” along the river.

Hopkins compares the trees to a frail, fragile woman, saying, “Since country is so tender/To touch her being so slender” (12–13). By giving nature a feminine body, the “hacking” and “hewing” become even more heinous. Hopkins accentuates the anguish of this devastation by comparing it to the unpleasant prick of an eyeball. He uses the image of a needle in the lyric “Even where we mean/To mend her, we end her” to demonstrate how fragile nature is and how swiftly people may ruin it (16-17).

Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poetry lamentation in reaction to the Victorian industrial revolution’s assault on the destruction of the biosphere. The exploitation of natural resources, which destroys our ecosystem, stems from a “dominator” economic ideology of infinite expansion. This theoretical foundation is intended to move past typical binary oppositions and instead stress multidisciplinary partnership views in their many descriptions of the natural environment and life, encompassing all so-called sentient and non-sentient beings.

Hopkins understood the value of literature and art in addressing modern challenges in order to inspire, enlighten, and reform, and he demonstrated this through his poems.