Structure and versification in God's Grandeur

It is a traditional Petrarchan sonnet with an octave and sestet.

The rhyme scheme is abbaabba cdcdc. Basically, it is iambic pentameter,
the traditional meter.

The alliterative pattern sets up a counterpoint to the meter. There is often

a caesura in the middle of the line, drawing our attention away from the end
of the lines and the rhyme.

Caesuras, or pauses, could be placed in the middle of each line in the

octave, though not in the sestet.

There are obvious enjambments, carried-over lines, as in ‘Crushed' (l.4); ‘Is

bare'(l.8); ‘Oh'(l.12); ‘World'(l.14). Each of these has an emphatic point to
make and seriously disturbs the smoothness of the iambic lines.

Hopkins' meter
The first line really only has four stressed syllables (world, charged, grand-,
God). So, it seems to get off to an irregular start, unless we put a stress on
‘with'.

In the second line, we don't see any real iambic pattern. Instead we get
‘flame out', with both words are stressed, as are ‘shook foil' which are
emphatic but not regular.
Type of sonnets

The Petrarchan sonnet

 It is divided into two stanzas.

 The first comes the eight-line octave (abba abba), then the six-line
sestet (cdecde cdcdcd)
 It is in the sestet, in the final six lines, that the argument or question
that was presented in the octave is answered.

The Shakespearean sonnet

 It has three quatrains, followed by a couplet.

 The rhyme scheme for this variation is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

 The “turn” is reserved for the final couplet, which serves to conclude
or even to refute, that comes before it.

The Spenserian sonnet

 The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund

Spenser.
 Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic
pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter.
 The rhyme scheme of these lines is ABABBCBCC.