Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

 

A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

 

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

 

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

photograph of Inversnaid Falls upstream, with Ash & Fern
Inversnaid
photograph: Isle of Man: Balaglas glen ferns
“flitches of fern”
(see “Inversnaid,” line 11)

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