Rhymes in The Wreck of the Deutschland

Hopkins' rhymes are also often experimental.

In stanzas 30, 31, the rhyming of stanza 30 is entirely obvious:

• The a-rhyme of ‘light','night' and ‘outright'
• The b-rhyme of ‘son','nun' and ‘done'
• The c-rhyme of ‘stain' and ‘brain' could not be clearer
• Every rhyme is a stressed syllable (sometimes called masculine rhyme), and they are nearly all monosyllables.

By contrast, the rhyme scheme of stanza 31 is unusual:

• The a-rhyme becomes dactylic, i.e. a stressed rhyme followed by two unstressed ones (an extreme form of feminine rhyme), thus: ‘pain for the'; ‘vein for the', and ‘grain for thee'
• The b-rhyme is ‘rest of them'; ‘-fessed of them'; ‘breast of the(m)' – the ‘m' coming from the next line
• The c-rhyme is ‘Providence' and ‘of it, and(s)' where again the ‘s' has to be borrowed from the next line.

It has to be admitted this is the most extreme example of Hopkins' contrivance.

• Tweet