Then comes thy glory | in the summer months
With light and heat refulgent. | Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection | through the swelling year."

By _period_ is meant the conclusion of the sentence. The _period_ or end
of a sentence may fall at the end of a line or at any point in it. The
period serves to break up the poem into longer or shorter parts. In
Milton the sentences are generally long, and the periods thus break up
the poem into a sort of stanza of varying length. "Run-on" lines are the
prevailing type; and this fact, in connection with the length of the
sentences and the constant shifting of the pauses, imparts to his
"Paradise Lost" its peculiar organ roll. The following passage will
serve to make this clear:

"Of man's first disobedience, | and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, | whose mortal taste
Brought death into our world, | and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, | till one greater Man
Restore us, | and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, | that on the secret top
Of Oreb, | or of Sinai, | didst inspire
That shepherd | who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning | how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos.

"Or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, | and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, | I thence
Invoke thy aid | to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight | intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, | while it pursues
Things unattempted yet | in prose or rhyme."

These sixteen lines practically make two stanzas. Twelve lines, or three
fourths of the whole number, are "run-on." The caesural _pause_, as will
be seen on counting the feet in connection with which they occur, is
exceedingly varied.

With the two foregoing extracts may be compared the following from
Shelley's "Alastor," in which all the periods are "end-stopt," and
divide the selection into clearly recognizable and almost regular
stanzas. It will be noted that the movement and effect are very
different from those of Thomson and Milton.

"There was a poet | whose untimely tomb
No human hand | with pious reverence reared,
But the charmed eddies | of autumnal winds
Built o'er his mouldering bones | a pyramid
Of mouldering leaves | in the waste wilderness.

"A lovely youth, | no mourning maiden decked
With weeping flowers