Yes, Alicia, there are some who seem to enjoy the knee-jerk sport of inversion-hunting. One sniff of the quarry and off they go — or should I say they go off? The assumption seems to be that the word order must always be the most usual one if a stilted effect is to be avoided. But the most usual word order is no more than that. To depart from that most usual order is not necessarily a “poeticism” — we quite often do it in prose (and in speech), usually to give emphasis to a given word or phrase.
At Grass has long been my personal favourite among Larkin’s poems. And I agree that the ending is particularly effective.
Ernest Dowson in the short piece below uses a particular and rather colloquial type of inversion, if that’s the right word, in the first line of each of the two quatrains. This is the type of construction frequently heard in sentences like “He was an odd fellow, my old Uncle Godfey.” The early pronoun is a kind of placeholder for the subject, which is then spelt out after the predicate. The subject gains extra emphasis by being mentioned twice, once in its full form at the end of the phrase or sentence where it reverberates in the mind.
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
....Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
....We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
....Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
....Within a dream.
[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited May 30, 2005).]
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