Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Structure
Pied Beauty is a curtal sonnet, a sonnet which does not follow the traditional 14 line pattern. Hopkins condensed this sonnet into a brief ten and a half lines. The octave is here 6 lines and the sestet, four and a half. Yet the final effect is one of coherence and unity.
Language
The vigour of Hopkins poetry comes from his use of regular words in unusual ways and words he created when he did not have a word that would convey his meaning precisely. He often used words in their archaic forms. The compound words like couple-colour, Fresh-firecoal, chestnut-falls in Pied Beauty take on a rich colour and meaning lacking in their equivalents.
Imagery
Pied Beauty is a “ hymn to Creation”. It provides proof why we should be thankful to God and praise him. He has filled the earth with beautiful dappled things for our delight – things like skies of couple-colour, rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.
The image of the falling chestnut revealing inner ‘moral’ core or its kernel tells us that everything that God creates has a value apart from the beautiful exterior.
Movement/ Rhythm
Throughout the poem, there is a sense of movement that is sometimes fast:
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
And sometimes jerky: With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
Sprung rhythm produces rich aural patterns that have been much appreciated by later poets.
Sounds
Pied Beauty is sprinkled with alliterative sounds:
• Line 1: “Glory”, “God”
• Line 2: “Couple-colour” and “cow”
• Line 4: “Fresh-firecoal”, “falls” and “finches’”
• Line 5: “Plotted,” “pieced,” and “plough”; “fold” and “fallow”
• Line 6: “Trades,” “tackle,” and “trim”
• Line 7: “Spare” and “strange”
• Line 8: “Fickle” and “freckled”
Alliteration adds to the sense of movement and rhythm and is a powerful tool in hands of a poet.
Figures of Speech
The final line has a full metaphor, “fathers-forth” where Gods is considered a father and his creations are all his children. This concept of God being a loving father to his children is common in Christian theology.
Fresh fire-coal chestnut is another metaphor where a falling chestnut is compared to a burning ember that glows red as it falls.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
On my first reading of the poem, I had a vague overall idea that the writer is praising god for the creation of different things. However, I was very confused with some of his examples and the second half of the poem.
ReplyDeleteAfter researching and analysing the poem, I began to achieve a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the poem. I now know that Hopkins is trying to emphasise the diversity in life. He uses the word "dappled" to suggest that things are beautiful and more fascination because they are not perfect, just like a brinded cow or the patterns on a trout.
After using alliteration and triples to elaborate what he meant by "dappled" (with examples such as firecoals, chestnuts, finches and the landscape), Hopkins pays attention to the diversity of man. He uses the word "trade" as a metaphor of the different activities of man and also points out various man made items.
I like how Hopkins ends the poem by praising god again. His last line connotes that he is thankful of god for the multiplicity of everything in this world. I think it is a beautiful ending that summarises the poem well.
This is yet, another poem I don't know what it is trying to say to me or trying to make me feel went I saw it for the first time. I only understand that it's about god and thanking him for creating things the way they are.
ReplyDeleteThe poet, Hopkins, had been using many metaphors, similes, alliterations to give examples of mixed up things, so many that it should confused a number of people. Comparing blue-white sky with black - white cow, moles on people face with spot on a trout (I thought that rose-moles is a kind of fish at first).
A simple phrase: "fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls" that I thought that it was meaningless became a really deep-meaning metaphor.First it compare a chestnut to a coal to tell how it look like in case readers never seen one, then when the chestnut falls on the ground it crack, reveling the soft flesh inside the hard shell.
Hopkins didn't only comment on nature, he also comment on mankind work like field that look different depends on what it was used for:blending nature's with human's work and trading that made up from many strategies.
Near the end he introduce a dozen of contrast to give us a clearer image of how everything on the world is different and even comment on how things always change, never steady and finally conclude that god can brought out beauty from what he had created, with out having to change anything so admire him.
To me this simple-looking poem is harder to annotate than all the long one like the planners. Maybe because it was very old. However, I am proud that I can understand that the last line is trying to say that the god can bring out beauty without changing anything before research
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy first impression is how beautiful the language used to describe the scenery is; you could easily imagine a calm, nostalgic image in your head while reading it. The poem was quite bold in the statement that he wanted to thank god by blunting starting off with ‘glory be to god’, to me this creates a warm feeling and makes me look back and also thank god for the things he had done to earth. This poem is mainly about listing the things god had made that he appreciated.
ReplyDeleteHowever on a deeper meaning you could highlight the word ‘dappled’ from the text (dappled means ‘dotted’ or something that has flaws). This could be interpreted that Hopkins wasn’t thanking god for making everything picture perfect, he was thanking him for the way everything originally was.
There was a range of techniques used out throughout the poem: metaphor, simile, alliteration. I think alliteration is the most notable technique frequently used in the poem. ‘couple-colour’ and ‘fresh-firecoal’ are just some of the examples that made the reader remember the words that was stated throughout the poem.
Finally to make a lasting effect Hopkins repeated his thanks to the god in the last sentence to summarise again his feelings about god. He draws attention to the words ‘praise him’ at the end of the sentence by applying a colon in front, the two words that stand out are hammered into our minds- it was nearly like we were hypnotised to remember them.