Yes, yes, Caleb, all true; truisms in fact.
Of course the lines are varied---that's
almost always true of good verse in strict
meter. But if you're hearing 3-beat and
5-beat lines, you're mishearing the poem.
Hopkins clearly intends four beats a line
and expects your ear to hear that.
And, although unusual, it is possible to
write great poetry in unvaried lines---or
very little varied. One example is Chidiock
Tichborne's beautiful elegy for himself on
the eve of his execution, in which just about
every line sounds the same, straight iambic,
most of the phrasing exactly parallel, even the
caesuras falling in the same place in every
line.
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