Pied Beauty

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter: Sprung Rhythm

Sprung rhythm is one of Hopkins’s personal poetic inventions. Considered a precursor to free verse, sprung rhythm is meant to possess a natural cadence similar to human speech. Sprung rhythm is an accentual verse, and although the number of metrical feet per line is consistent, the number of syllables varies. Each metrical foot begins with an unstressed syllable followed by an irregular number of stressed syllables. In practice, this rhythm creates a sense of momentum in “Pied Beauty,” leading the reader of Hopkins’s poems through a slow build that crests with the volta, or turn, near the end of the sonnet. This naturally inspired, stress-timed momentum highlights the dizzying beauty of the natural world, before moving the reader towards the primary focus of the poem: God as a perfect creator of a beautifully imperfect world.

“Pied Beauty” is arranged as a sonnet, or a poem with 14 lines that typically has a volta. Although the form was popularized by Shakespeare and Petrarch, there are many variations on the typical form. Hopkins modified the sonnet form to fit his own structural needs. “Pied Beauty” is an example of the curtal sonnet form, which Hopkins used for several of his poems. The curtal sonnet form condenses the traditional 14-line Petrarchan sonnet into 11 lines, consisting of a sestet, a quatrain, and an extra concluding line: “Praise him” (Line 11).

Alliteration

Hopkins’s poetic style relies on alliteration and alliterative word chains. In “Pied Beauty,” he uses alliteration in almost every line, with a notable example in “Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings” (Line 4). The soft “f” sound reverberates like a calm beat, much like the fluttering of a bird’s wings or the crackling of a fire. The wings of birds, the soft thud of chestnuts falling upon the ground, and fiery coal are all very different from each other, though they are all united through alliteration, one common sound. This unification through shared sound also occurs in “Glory be to God” (Line 1) and “couple-colour” (Line 2). The hard “g” and “c” sounds draw more attention to these phrases, emphasizing the importance of divine glory, the theme of Variation in Nature, and the motif of pied or “dappled things” (Line 1).

The hard “g” and “c” sounds also stand out when juxtaposed with the “s” sound, or sibilance, in the second stanza: “spare, strange” (Line 7) and “swift, slow; sweet, sour” (Line 9). The repetition of these soft sounds gives the poem a musicality that is at once lulling and engaging, underscoring Hopkins's final message to “Praise [God]” (Line 11) for the spectrum of wonders He creates.

Rhyme

Hopkins also uses rhyme to further his thematic purposes in “Pied Beauty.” Like most traditional sonnets, “Pied Beauty” possesses a clear and obvious rhyme scheme: abcabc dbcdc. “Pied Beauty” is condensed in the curtal sonnet form, so that it is mathematically three-fourths of a Petrarchan sonnet. While the Petrarchan sonnet has a typical rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde, the curtal sonnet form cuts that rhyme scheme down. The effect of condensing the rhyme scheme and losing the usual metrical beat of a sonnet (iambic pentameter in English) also emphasizes Hopkins’s thematic focus on variation in natural beauty. The abcabc rhyme scheme in the sestet portion of the sonnet lends a sense of natural, sing-song rhythm to the piece. Put simply, the poem reads like an old English folk song—the mixture of compound-adjectives, alliteration, and bouncing rhyme gives “Pied Beauty” a bounding rhythm that mimics the natural intonations of English song or the instinctive, unrefined rhythm of the (perfectly designed) imperfect, natural world.