I made this shadow box because I revere the poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins. Faith and doubt in God is what he's known for, but I've always seen almost a holy reverence for nature in his words. When you read him, you can almost hear him breathing in the room, winded from one of his lengthy trapses in the wood. This stanza is from 'Insvernaid' written about 1880.
What would the world be, once bereft of wildness and wet?
Let them be left, oh let them be left,
Wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
This outdoor loving woman is standing on a rock while the river rushes by her. A speckled trout has jumped into her arms. Birds fly overhead and water rats hold everything aloft.
Gerald, who suffered from depression, but fought it bravely died of typhoid fever in 1875. His last words "I am happy, so happy."
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