| or votive cypress wreath
The lone couch | of his everlasting sleep;
Gentle and brave and generous, | no lorn bard
Breathed o'er his dark fate | one melodious sigh;
He lived, he died, he sang, | in solitude.

"Strangers have wept | to hear his passionate notes;
And virgins, | as unknown he passed, | have pined
And wasted | for fond love of his wild eyes.

"The fire of those soft orbs | has ceased to burn,
And Silence, | too enamored of that voice,
Locks its mute music | in her rugged cell."

It will be observed that not only all the periods, but also twelve out
of the seventeen lines are "end-stopt."

+54. Poetic Style.+ By poetic style is meant the choice and arrangement
of words peculiar to poetry. While in the main poetic and prose diction
is the same, still there are words and verbal combinations admissible
only in poetry. Poetry strives after concreteness and vividness of
expression. Such words as _steed_, _swain_, _wight_, _muse_, _Pegasus_,
_yclept_, _a-cold_, _sprent_, _bower_, _meed_, _isle_, _a-field_,
_dight_, _sooth_, _hight_, and many others, are hardly ever met with in
ordinary prose. Their prose equivalents are generally preferred.

Poetry uses great freedom, called _poetic license_, in the order of
words and construction of sentences. The principal deviations from the
prose order are as follows:

(1) The verb may precede the subject for the sake of emphasis or meter;
as,

"_Came_ a _troop_ with broad swords swinging."

(2) The verb may follow its object; as,

"_Thee_, shepherd, _thee_ the woods, and desert caves,
And all their echoes, _mourn_."

(3) The infinitive may precede the word on which it depends; as,

"When first thy sire, _to send_ on earth
Virtue, his darling child, _designed_."

(4) Prepositional phrases may precede the verbs they modify; as,

"_Of man's first disobedience_, sing, Heavenly Muse."

(5) The preposition may follow the noun it governs; as,

"From peak to peak, the rattling crags _among_,
Leaps the live thunder."

(6) Adverbs may precede the words they modify; as,

"The plowman _homeward_ plods his weary way."

(7) Condensed expressions in the form of compound epithets are
frequently used; as,

"O music, _sphere-descended_ maid!"

(8) An expletive pronoun may be used to throw the subject after the
verb; as,

"It ceased, the melancholy so