First and foremost, the very progression of the argument in “Pied Beauty” portrays the all-encompassing beauty created by God. Hopkins begins with a simple statement proclaiming : “Glory be to God for dappled things” and initially Hopkins describes features of the natural world such as “skies of couple-colour”, “Rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim” and “Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls. This is then broadened to include humanity and its activities: “All trades their gear and tackle and trim”, and penultimately to include “All things counter, original, spare, strange”. Finally Hopkins attributes all of this wonder to God, proclaiming that the reader should “Praise Him”. This broadening progression of argument not only displays the outward meaning of “Pied Beauty” but also gives a cumulative effect that helps the poem build to an emphatic climax. Such a build up towards an ultimate euphoria helps to emulate the energetic nature of God’s creations and inturn contribute to creating “instress” reflecting “inscape”.
The tone of “Pied Beauty” does, from the outset, portray the remarkably liveliness of the natural world. Excited, evocative phrases like “Glory be to God”, “who knows how” and “Praise Him” all display a positive, come euphoric attitude towards both nature and correspondingly, the creator. Hence, Hopkins has used tone in a similar way to which he used the progression of argument - to create “instress”.
Along with argument and tone, Hopkins also uses very innovative language techniques to portray his subject. Among the most prevalent of these language techniques are alliteration and assonance. Alliteration can be heard in lines like “For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow” and “Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;” . Assonance is also present in lines like “For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;”. These devices help to provide “Pied Beauty” with an energy and appeal to the ear, that not only helps it overcome the limitations of the short poem genre, but also further reflect the religious theory of “inscape”.
Another highly important technique employed by Hopkins in “Pied Beauty” is that of the use of an innovative scansion he called “sprung rhythm”. This technique involved no regular metre for the poem, only a high compression of stressed syllables. This “sprung rhythm” is evident in the line: “And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim”. The rhythm subsequently involves a high compression of lively language and often entails the plentiful use of hyphenated phrases such as “couple-colour” and “Fresh-firecoal”. While the employment of this unique rhythmical technique allows Hopkins to further create the highly energetic “instress” to reflect “inscape”, the lack of a metrical pattern also reflects the “dappled” and contrasting nature of the natural world. The use of an innovative and varied rhythm has therefore allowed Hopkins to further express involved theoretical concerns within a constricted format. It also allows him to reflect “All things counter, original, spare, strange” with a varied rhythm that suits the varied nature of his subject, hence helping him overcome the restrictions of the short poem.
Namely through using the devices of argument, tone, alliteration, assonance and “sprung rhythm”, Hopkins has not only overcome the restrictions of the short poem, but used the form toward the betterment of his verse. Indeed, most of Hopkins’s verse was written in the sonnet form or shorter. It is the short poem genre that allows Hopkins to use compressed, vibrant language in a compressed, vibrant form and hence, reflect his vision of the natural world and the creator in a way that best suits the nature of the subject.
Another poet able to overcome the limitations of the short poem was William Butler Yeats, in a somewhat dissimilar fashion to Hopkins. While in “Pied Beauty” Hopkins uses a vivacious, energetic style to express his subject, in “All Things Can Tempt Me” (pg.168), Yeats demonstrates his concerns in a different, simpler style to that found in “Pied Beauty”.
“All Things Can Tempt Me” is but one of Yeats’s many poems in which he discusses his own “craft of verse” in relation to his life. In the poem, he expresses his despondency at the world of emotion and action - the world that used to distract him from the composition of poetry. This world comprised of his forlorn love, Maud Gonne, who is the “woman’s face” mentioned in the second line, as well as “the seeming needs of [his] fool driven land”. Alienated from this world of emotion, Yeats has sought solace in the “accustomed toil” of writing.
Yeats’s main thematic concern in “All Things Can Tempt Me” seems to be the stark and unfulfilling contrast between youth and age, between the emotional and the intellectual, between the life and the work. Yeats finds himself in a state of flux. He is caught between a world where he “had not given a penny for a song / Did not the poet sing it with such airs / That one believed he had a sword upstairs” and what he later described in “Sailing to Byzantium” as a world of “unaging intellect”. Even the latter option clearly provides little appeal for Yeats as “All things can tempt” him from that world. This state of flux and Yeats despondency concerning his situation is reflected in the poem through the use of tone, language and metre, and these devices allow Yeats to express his argument in the autotelic fashion he determines to use in the short poem.
“All Things Can tempt Me” uses, from the outset, tone to reflect the poets’ despondency. Words like “worse” and phrases like “fool-driven” and “Colder and deafer and dumber” are all negative in their outward meaning and connotation. This use of negative phraseology gives the poem an alienated, even melancholic tone that helps Yeats reflect his attitudes and subject in confined space.
Whereas in “Pied Beauty”, Hopkins notably uses the devices of alliteration and assonance to create vibrancy and energy, “All Things Can Tempt Me” uses little of these devices. Although the phrases “seeming needs” and “dumber and deafer” are examples of assonance and alliteration respectably, it is the simple, plain language in the poem that contributes to the effect of the plain, despondent tone of the poem.
The metre of the poem also contributes to this effect. The majority of the lines in “All Things Can Tempt Me” are written in Iambic Pentameter. As this metre is a highly conventional one, it does in some ways seem to parody the “craft of verse” itself, creating a monotonous pattern that continues to portray the “accustomed toil” of writing. The use of Iambic Pentameter also contributes to the despondent tone of the poem. The only two places where Yeats has departed from the use of this metre are the lines “I had not given a penny for a song” and “Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish”. This departure is not without reason as the former line’s anomalous rhythm helps to demonstrate what Yeats would have called the “hot blood of youth” and the rhythm of the last line displays the cold, deaf and dumb nature of the fish (and incidentally, the poet). This has been done through the adoption of a predominantly trochaic metre that stresses the syllables “Cold”, “dumb” and “deaf”. In this way the poet has used the scansion of the poem to express his argument in a concise form and hence, helped to overcome the restrictions of the short poem.
Along with metre, Yeats has also used rhyming couplets to write “All Things Can Tempt Me”. This form of rhyme has a similar effect to the metre as it yet again contributes to the banal tone of the poem, again reflecting Yeats’s’ emotional state. It also helps contribute to the poet’s parody of his “craft of verse”, as the rhyming couplet was a form favoured for writing satirical verse and used by the likes Pope and Byron.
This use of a rhyming scheme is yet another device a poet can use not merely to overcome, but utilise the idiosyncrasies of the short poem genre. Used in conjunction with the techniques of argument, tone, assonance, alliteration, metre and rhythm it allows the poet to express his or her thematic concerns in a manner that best reflects these concerns, be they theoretical, sensual or emotional. Hopkins and Yeats are poets that have used a combination of all or some of these techniques in their short verse. In “Pied Beauty” Hopkins uses them in a euphoric manner and, conversely, in “All Things Can Tempt Me” Yeats espouses debilitating melancholia. In both cases, the poet has woven a fabric with his poetry that does, despite the lack of thread available to create a massive garment, cover their concerns in a manner that best suits them.
List of Works Consulted
Jeffares, A. Norman (ed.), W.B. Yeats - Selected Poetry, Macmillan, London, 1962.
Jeffares, A. Norman, W.B. Yeats - The Poems, Edward Arnold Publishers, London, 1961.
Kavanagh, P.J. and Michie, James (ed.), The Oxford Book of Short Poems, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.
Gardner, W.H., Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vol. I, Oxford University Press, London, 1958.
Gardner, W.H., Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Penguin Books, London, 1953.
Payne, Tom, The A-Z of Great Writers, Carlton Books, Dubai, 1997.
Tom Payne, The A-Z of Great Writers, Carlton Books Limited, Dubai, 1997; pg.395.
W.H. Gardner, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vol I, Oxford University Press, London, 1961, pg. 11.
“God’s Grandeur” in W.H. Gardner (ed), Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Penguin, London, 1953 :pg. 27
“The Windhover” in Gardner (ed), 1953, pg. 30.
“The Choice” by Yeats in Kavanagh and Mitchie (ed), The Oxford Book of Short Poems ; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985, pg. 170.
A.N. Jeffares (ed), W.B. Yeats - Selected Poetry, Macmillan, London, 1962, pg. 104.
“The Cold Heaven” in Kavanagh and Michie, pg.169