Far too many aspens are now felled (cavatina)

(after William Cowper and Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Far too many aspens are now felled,
gone is the shade
while the wind blows and its searching in vain
the colonnade
where it once played its own happy song;
it is man made
the destruction that came, the great havoc
that down many rows of great trees did knock.

[References: “The Poplar-Field” by William Cowper and “Binsey Poplars” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.]