‘Instress’ means the reader’s experience of ‘inscape’, meaning that when we read a
Inscape is the ability to see and capture the unique essence of something. Instress is the ability to see inscape.
CONSONANT CHIME
When read aloud, Hopkins’s poems can almost sound like tongue-twisters. Initially, this seems to be because he uses alliteration so much. Alliteration is a sound effect most poets use, but in moderation. By using so much alliteration, Hopkins was deliberately creating a sound effect called ‘consonant chime’, where consonantal sounds are repeated but the vowel sounds change. He learned this technique from Welsh poetry, where it is called ‘cynghanned’. Sometimes he combines it with assonance to create internal rhyme.