Curtal Sonnet
Quick answer: A curtal sonnet is Gerard Manley Hopkins's shortened sonnet of ten and a half lines. Learn its unusual proportions, its rhyme scheme and how to try one.
A curtal sonnet is a shortened sonnet invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins: ten and a half lines that shrink the standard fourteen while keeping its proportions. Hopkins reasoned that if a sonnet is an octave plus a sestet, an 8:6 ratio, then a scaled-down version could be a sestet plus a quatrain and a half, 6:4.5. The word curtal simply means shortened or docked, as of a horse's tail.
Hopkins wrote only three curtal sonnets, and one of them, 'Pied Beauty', became one of the most loved poems in English, which is why the form survives. Poets meet it as a curiosity first and a genuine option second: it offers the sonnet's compression and turn in an even smaller frame, with a famously abrupt final half line that lands like a held breath.
How It Works
The poem opens with a six-line stanza rhyming ABCABC, which does the octave's work of laying out the subject. Then comes a stanza of four lines and a final tail of roughly half a line, rhyming DBCDC in 'Pied Beauty', which performs the sestet's answering turn. The mathematics matter less in practice than the feel: statement, turn, and a clipped ending.
An invented tail shows the effect of that last half line. After ten lines praising, say, the patience of gardeners, the poem might end simply: 'Dig on.' Two syllables where the ear expects ten. The shortfall itself becomes the emphasis.
Where You Will See It
'Pied Beauty', written in 1877 and published in 1918, is the essential example, a burst of praise for dappled and freckled things that closes on the two-word instruction to praise God. Hopkins's 'Peace' and 'Ash-boughs' also use curtal proportions. Because Hopkins folded in his sprung rhythm as well, the form is often met at its most intense; later poets who attempt it usually keep the shape but relax the metre.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Treat the six-line opening as a catalogue or a claim and the four-and-a-half-line close as its consequence. The form rewards subjects that build towards a single short imperative or admission, because everything funnels into that final fragment. Write the half line first if you can; knowing your last two or three words tells you what the preceding ten lines must earn. Do not pad the tail into a full line, since the truncation is the whole point.
What poets can take from this
- Decide your final half line early; the whole poem is a runway for it.
- Keep the ABCABC opening stanza to one subject, treated in quick, listing strokes.
- Let the turn arrive at line seven, the scaled equivalent of the sonnet's line nine.
- Aim for two to four syllables in the tail, strong stresses only.
- Read 'Pied Beauty' aloud twice before drafting, once for sense and once purely for rhythm.
Try it yourself
Write a curtal sonnet in praise of something most people find ugly: a car park, a crow, a scar. Spend six lines on evidence, four on argument, and end with a half line of verdict.
Questions
Is a curtal sonnet really a sonnet?
It is a deliberate miniature of one. Hopkins designed it to keep the sonnet's 8:6 proportions at three-quarter scale, so most critics treat it as a true sonnet variant rather than a separate form.
How long is the last line of a curtal sonnet?
Roughly half a line, and often much less. In 'Pied Beauty' the tail is just two words. The abruptness is intentional and carries the poem's final stress.
Who invented the curtal sonnet?
Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Victorian Jesuit poet, in the 1870s. He named it, theorised its proportions, and wrote the handful of examples on which the whole tradition rests.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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