Another:
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow’rs,
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in show’rs
A brighter wash——
But now, supposing the connection to be so slender as to admit a pause, it follows not that a pause may always be put. There is one rule to which every other ought to bend, That the sense must never be wounded or obscured by the music; and upon that account, I condemn the following lines:
Ulysses, first || in public cares, she found.
And,
Who rising, high || th’ imperial sceptre rais’d.
With respect to inversion, it appears both from reason and experiments, that many words which cannot bear a separation in their natural order, admit a pause when inverted. And it may be added, that when two words, or two members of a sentence, in their natural order, can be separated by a pause, such separation can never be amiss in an inverted order. An inverted period, which runs cross to the natural train of ideas, requires to be marked in some measure even by pauses in the sense, that the parts may be distinctly known. Take the following examples.
As with cold lips || I kiss’d the sacred veil.
With other beauties || charm my partial eyes.
Full in my view || set all the bright abode.
With words like these || the troops Ulysses rul’d.
Back to th’ assembly roll || the thronging train.
Not for their grief || the Grecian host I blame.
The same where the separation is made at the close of the first line of the couplet:
For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.