[Gregory Dowling]

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children.

This is a couplet from Longfellow's Evangeline. He uses a great deal of inversion in this poem and it always seems appropriate because essentially it's a poem about homelessness and helplessness, about people who are have no control over their destinies. So here first the tidings spread, and then, haphazardly and aimlessly, the women and children follow. Putting the verb before the subject seems to emphasise the fact that they are not performers in any active sense.

There's another interesting example at the very beginning of the poem:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

There's a curious ambiguity in the last two lines here: "… and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest." The poet could be using inversion, in which case it is the ocean that speaks and the forest that answers; or he could be adopting standard syntax, in which case the ocean answers the wail of the forest. It may not be a deliberate ambiguity but it does seem to contribute to the mood of uncertainty in the poem as a whole. It raises the question whether there's a genuine dialogue between the ocean and forest, or whether there's just a meaningless exchange of echoes. And the poem as a whole is full of echoes - it's no accident that the most famous lines in it are a description of the mocking-bird's song.