What is the poet's style in the poem, The Windhover?

The Windhover is a Petrarchan sonnet, meaning it is a poem of 14 lines divided into an octave (first eight lines) and a sestet (last six lines). Traditionally, a Petrarchan sonnet features a notable turn, or volta, between these two sections. In "The Windhover," the volta occurs when the speaker transitions from describing the bird's movement to thinking more broadly about the bird in the context of God's creation. Where "The Windhover" differs from the sonnet tradition is in its meter: the poem is written in "sprung rhythm," meaning that the number of syllables in a line varies while the number of accents stays the same. There are five accents in each line of the poem, but the number of syllables ranges widely. In this way, the poem straddles the line between the hyper-traditional sonnet form and a more experimental expression of emotion that more closely mimics the rhythm of natural speech. While Hopkins conforms the the sonnet's thematic conventions—the expression of big ideas within a confined space of only 14 lines—he pushes the boundaries of the form in order to communicate the overwhelming nature of the speaker's meditations.