Enjambment is a literary device where a sentence or phrase in a poem extends beyond the end of a line, without a pause or a syntactical break.
Example from
William Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”:
“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,”
Enjambment in these lines creates a flowing rhythm that mirrors the speaker’s contemplation of nature’s presence.
Example from
Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”:
“And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.”
Enjambment connects the imagery of the ocean and the color description, maintaining the poem’s intense emotional momentum.
Example from
Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”:
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear”
Enjambment in these lines underscores the speaker’s triumphant ascent from fear to hope.
Example from
E.E. Cummings’s “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond”:
“and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses”
Enjambment enhances the delicate and introspective tone of the poem, allowing the ideas to meld together in the reader’s mind.
The Literary Companion 