Stylistic Inversion
By inversion is meant an unusual order of words chosen for emphasis greater expressiveness. The notion of stylistic inversion is broader than the notion of inversion in grammar, where it generally relates only to the position of subject and predicate. Thus, in stylistics it may include the postposition of an adjective in an attributive phrase:
Adieu, adieu! My native shore
Fades о 'er the waters blue. (Byron)
A passionate ballad gallant and gay.... (A. Tennyson)
Little boy blue,
Come blow your horn (Nursery rhyme)
It may also refer to a change in the standard position of all other members of the sentence (Subject — Predicate — Object). Thus, in poetic language secondary members (object, adverbial modifier) may stand before the main members:
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight. (Byron)
The sea is but another sky,
The sky a sea as well,
And which is earth and which is heaven,
The eye can scarcely tell! (Longfellow)
At your feet /fall. (Dryden)
As for the position of the predicate before subject, we may distinguish cases of 1) full inversion:
The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds
Dissolved in glory float,
And midway of the radiant flood,
Hangs silently the boat. (Longfellow)
On goes the river
And out past the mill. (Stevenson)
On these roads from the manufacturing centres there moved many mobile homes pulled by trucks. (Steinbeck): Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Malhew) 2) cases of partial inversion, usually when an adverbial modifier, object or a predicative begins the sentence and only part of the predicate comes before the subject:
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep. (Milton); How little had I realized that, for me, life was only then beginning. (Christie); Many sweet little appeals did Miss Sharp make to him about the dishes at dinner. (Thackeray); Terribly cold it certainly was. (Wilde)
