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Poems for study » As Kingfishers Catch Fire » Structure and versification in As Kingfishers Catch Fire

The sonnet is a sophisticated piece of poetry. Each word takes its place appropriately (in the same way that the life of the ‘just person’ is lived). There is no showing off of verbal dexterity, but the patterning bears out the meaning succinctly.

Metre

Although Petrarchan sonnets have an iambic pentameter line, there is a tension within the poem between the rising foot of the iambic and the falling foot of the trochee:

  • ll.3,4,6,7,10,11,12, 13 all begin with a stressed syllable, which could easily lead into a trochaic line
  • often in iambic pentameter the first foot is trochaic, and this is called first foot inversion and is typical of the Petrarchan sonnet
  • this is how most of these lines resolve themselves, except 1.8, where the trochaic pattern carries on to the caesura, where it reverts to iambic.
Investigating As Kingfishers Catch Fire
  • What is the force of l.8 being trochaic?
    • Notice Hopkins himself marks in the stresses.
  • It could be argued the ‘Bow’ of l.4 should not be stressed, thus preserving the iambic throughout.
    • Try reading it both ways, remembering the enjambement from the previous line.
  • Look at l.12. There are dashes round the first ‘Christ’.
    • What do these signify?
    • How do they affect the rhythm?
  • In l.10, Hopkins has again marked a stress over ‘that’.
    • What does it do to the metre and sense?
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.
In the style of Petrarch, an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, who created both a form of the sonnet and presented a courtly ideal of womanhood.
A line containing five metrical feet each consisting of one stressed and one unstressed syllable.
A metric foot in a line of verse, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed. It is thus a falling metre.
In all languages, some syllables are pronounced with more of an emphasis than others. In poetry of many languages, this becomes a significant means of patterning. The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables within a line of verse is called its
The smallest sound fragment of a word, consisting of one vowel sound, with attached consonants if any.
A pause, often indicated in text by a comma or full stop, during a line of blank verse.
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.
Title (eventually used as name) given to Jesus, refering to an anointed person set apart for a special task such as a king.
The musical effect of the repetition of stresses or beats, and the speed or tempo at which these may be read.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--
Chríst--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 
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