“No worst, there is none” is a fourteen-line sonnet. The rhyme scheme is abbaabba cdcdcd. The poem does follow the regular outline of a sonnet. Hopkins varies where he places the stressed and unstressed syllables like the first line “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,” is more or less in iambic pentameter. The rhythm changes in the second line; “ more pangs will, schooled and forepangs, wilder wring.” He makes his poems so that sounds are repeated which is alliteration and example of this is “My cries heave, herd-long; huddle in…” and alos “Pitched past pitch of grief.” He also uses assonance in “an age-old anvil…” Another literary element the poet uses is the repetition of words such as “where, where is your…” and then he also repeats “O the mind, mind…” He alos uses words within the line that rhyme like “steep,” “deep,” “creep.” He also combines words to make them compound: “herds-long,” “no-man-fathomed,” “world-sorrow.” He even puts a beginning of a word at the end of a line and the ending of that word at the beginning of the next line like “ling-ering” and “chief-woe.” In this piece there is imagery that relate to religious symbols like “Mary, mother of us.” The theme of this poem has to do with death and mortality and death ending life and how days also die not just humans, which is sort of expresses in the last lien of the poem: “Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”
“The Windhover” is another of Hopkins’ poems. He continues on the religious path by dedicating the poem “To Christ Our Lord.” The poem is written three stanzas the first stanza has eight lines, and its rhyme scheme is abbaabba the last two stanzas are 3 lines each and their rhyme scheme is cdc dcd. even though the poem is written in three stanzas, the rhyme scheme is the same as in “No worst…” in this poem, the rhythm changes with the lines “Rebuffed the big wind my heart hiding/stirred for a bird, —the achieve of the mastery of the thing.” The poet uses alliteration in this line “-dom of daylights dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn…” another line is “High there, how he…” Words that rhyme within the lines include “Fall” and “gall” in line sixteen. Hopkins hyphenates words to make compounds, such as “blue-beak,” “bow-bend,” and “gold-vermilion.” He uses exclamation marks to express lots of feelings: “In his ecstasy!” and “O my chevalier!” Another way he expresses lots of feeling is putting words in all caps: “AND the fire…” He also uses colons like in “no wonder of it: sheer plod makes plow down sillion.” The image that Hopkins paints with his words of a windhover (or Falcon) shows his respect for the beauty of god’s things, “My heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird, —the achieved of the mastery of the thing.” He seems to say that even though the bird is beautiful it can be destroyed.
