Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected poems Contents
Structure and versification in To Seem the Stranger
A straightforward sonnet
This is one of Hopkins' simplest and most straightforward sonnets. As with No Worst, There is None, the octave divides neatly into two quatrains, and the sestet remains undivided, but with almost every line run on to the next. However, there is not even minimal comfort given in the sestet: the complaint runs through with barely a reversal.
The iambic pentameter lines are remarkably regular for Hopkins, barely disturbed even by first foot inversions. The only typical mark of Hopkins' versification in any evidence is the use of enjambement and the caesura to create some counterpointing, as in ll.1,2; ll.6-8; and most of the sestet.
Investigating To Seem the Stranger
- Scan l.7.
- What is the rhythmical effect of it?
- Overall, what do you find most attractive about this sonnet?
A sonnet is a poem with a special structure. It has fourteen lines, which are organised in a particular manner, usually characterised by the pattern of rhyming, which changes as the ideas in the poem evolve.
The 8-line stanza of a Petrarchan sonnet, always occupying the first eight lines. It sometimes has a division halfway, creating two quatrains. It poses a problem or describes some single object or incident.
A quatrain is a 4-line stanza, usually rhyming.
The 6-line stanza of a Petrarchan sonnet, occupying the last six lines, sometimes divided into tercets or couplets. It often resolves the problem posed in the octave or comments significantly on it.
A line containing five metrical feet each consisting of one stressed and one unstressed syllable.
The technique used in blank verse and other verse forms in which the sense of a line runs on without a pause to the next one; this often gives a sense of greater fluency to the lines.
A pause, often indicated in text by a comma or full stop, during a line of blank verse.
In music, the playing of two tunes at the same time, allowing them to interweave. In poetry, the use of two rhythms at the same time, for example, one being based on the metre, and one on the grammatical structure of the sentence.
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