Peace

“Peace” is a curtal sonnet, a variation on the sonnet form invented by Hopkins himself. The traditional sonnet form consists of fourteen lines. This curtal sonnet, a “curtailed” or shortened form of the sonnet, consists of 10.5 lines, with the first stanza containing six lines and the second stanza containing 4.5 lines. The lines follow a set rhyme scheme, one of two to which curtal sonnets typically adhere. This particular work follows an ABCABC DCBDC rhyme scheme. “Shut” and “but” rhyme together in lines 1 and 4. “Boughs” (Line 2) and “allows” (Line 5) connect with the slant or near rhyme of “house” (Line 9). “Hypocrite” (Line 3), “it” (Line 6), “exquisite” (Line 8), and “sit” (Line 11) all rhyme together. The new rhyme introduced in the second stanza is “lieu” (Line 7) and “coo” (Line 10).

Sonnets traditionally appear in iambic pentameter, meaning they contain five iambs, or five units of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. However, most of the lines in Hopkins’s first and second stanzas are alexandrines, meaning that there are six iambic feet, or units, included. For example, the last line of the first stanza reads, “Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?” (Line 6) There are a few lines which break from this pattern, including the third line.