'But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music and
design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of
calling _inscape_ is what I above all aim at in poetry.'

Here, then, in so many words, is Hopkins's 'avant toute chose' at a
higher level of elaboration. 'Inscape' is still, in spite of the
apparent differentiation, musical; but a quality of formalism seems to
have entered with the specific designation. With formalism comes
rigidity; and in this case the rigidity is bound to overwhelm the sense.
For the relative constant in the composition of poetry is the law of
language which admits only a certain amount of adaptation. Musical
design must be subordinate to it, and the poet should be aware that even
in speaking of musical design he is indulging a metaphor. Hopkins
admitted this, if we may judge by his practice, only towards the end of
his life. There is no escape by sound from the meaning of the posthumous
sonnets, though we may hesitate to pronounce whether this directness was
due to a modification of his poetical principles or to the urgency of
the content of the sonnets, which, concerned with a matter of life and
death, would permit no obscuring of their sense for musical reasons.

'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives, alas! away.'

There is compression, but not beyond immediate comprehension; music, but