A VALUABLE manuscript by one of the greatest poets of the Victorian age will stay in Oxford, it was announced yesterday.

The Bodleian Library in Broad Street revealed it has bought a draft of the poem Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins for £49,250 at Bonham’s auction house in London.

The manuscript by the Balliol College classics graduate was written in Oxford in 1879.

It laments the felling of poplar trees by the Thames in Binsey.

The 50-line three-page manuscript is the last in a series of five drafts which developed the final version of the famous poem.

The other four are already owned by the Bodleian.

Keeper of special collections Dr Christopher Fletcher said it was a hugely important addition to the collection.

He said: “It is a poem which has a very strong resonance for Oxford.

“It is about a place which was dear to Hopkins and the people of Oxford, written in response to the felling of the trees.

“And it still is a landscape which is still very important to people in Oxford today.”

Dr Fletcher hopes it will reveal more about Hopkins’ thought processes as he worked on the poem.

He added: “No scholar has had access to all of the drafts before. And literary drafts like this are important – they get you as close to the workings of a poet’s mind as you can be.

“You can see all the scratching out and writings. You do not get any closer to the original poem than studying what is written out by that poet’s hand.

“Manuscripts are unique so it is a wonderful thing to have.”

Manuscript collector Roy Davids, from Great Haseley near Thame, sold the draft on April 10.

Mr Davids said: “It was one of the great manuscripts, no question – and is probably the fourth best known of his poems. It is one of the most delightful.

"And it has been called one of the first environmental poems because he is bemoaning about someone coming along and felling the beautiful trees.

“Hopkins is one of my favourite poets, because of his handwriting.

“You can feel the joy in it. Even the photos of it thrill me – which is just as well because that’s all I have now.”

He bought the manuscript from a bookseller in London and kept it in a safe. Very few of Hopkin’s manuscripts exist – after his conversion to Catholicism in 1866 he burned all his poems in an operation he described as “the slaughter of the innocents”.

Hopkins, who lived from 1844 to 1889, is regarded as one of the greatest Victorian poets whose works were of a very innovative style for their time.

Binsey Poplars

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering
weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew-
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will made no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.