Poetry Essay On Various

Ideas and emotions are critical to a poem; one way in which a poet can express this is through their form. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost and William Shakespeare all employ a definitive form through their poems. The rhythm and structure of the poems are all important to form and in conveying the ideas and emotions.

Shakespeare's employs sonnet form. Shakespeare's sonnets consist of fourteen lines broken into three quatrains and one couplet at the end of the sonnet. Shakespeare's individual lines are iambic pentameter. The syllables are stressed on each even syllable and each line has ten syllables. Shakespeare employs end rhyme and a rhyming scheme of |abab| for the quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end. Hopkins also wrote in the sonnet form with fourteen lines however Hopkins often wrote used the Petrarchan sonnet which consists of an octave followed by a sestet. The rhyming scheme for the octave is |abbaabba| and the sestet rhyming scheme is |cdcdcd|. Hopkins employed sprung rhythm which he is so famous for which is less strict and allows greater freedom of the stresses and syllables in a line. Frost did not write in sonnet form. His form is quite free, he has short lyric type poems but he also did longer dramatic lyrics. Frost was very concise and direct in dealing with his ideas and emotions. Frost's poems do have an Iambic rhythm but not nearly as noticeable as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare's individual lines have the rhythm of a heartbeat due to the iambic pentameter as seen in "Sonnet 18" Line 3 'Rough winds do shake the dar-ling buds of May'. This is very appropriate as Shakespeare's sonnets often explore love and various other human emotions such as memories in which the human 'heart' metaphorically is very important. The use of sprung rhythm is crucial to the success of Hopkins poems and his rhythm serves the same purpose as Shakespeare's to mirror the subject. The important thing about sprung rhythm is in its slackness, so the speed of the lines can be varied. This is evident in "The Windhover" in which Hopkins varies the speed of the lines to capture the racing and pausing of the bird's movement. Hopkins was interested in the world and he saw it integrated by a design or pattern. Hopkins learnt the welsh technique of consonant chiming. The technique employs the use of many alliteration and internal rhyme giving a individual line depth and a echo. These close linking's of words is all about his idea of the world being integrated by a common pattern. This consonant chiming is employed in "Felix Randal" line3 'Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?' Frost when he produced his most famous works was interested in "the sound of the sense", he desired for his words to sound and feel like raw senses. Frost chooses his words carefully even though they seem prosaic are actually employed to mirror the senses. In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" it is easy to hear the harness bells shake and the 'sweep of easy wind and downy flake'. His use of prosaic words and use of Iambic rhythm is remarkable at achieving his goal.

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