Themes in Binsey Poplars

The poem anticipates also the main theme of Hopkins' two following poems, Duns Scotus' Oxford and Henry Purcell: the uniqueness as well as the beauty of nature:

  • ‘unselve' has a technical meaning: to take away the uniqueness of a scene, to destroy its inscape
  • this is also the meaning of ‘especial', used similarly in ‘Henry Purcell' (l.2).
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