Enjambment (also called "run-on lines," and, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "rove over") is the practice of carrying the rhythm of one poetic line forward into the next line without any pause at the end of the line. The word itself suggests "straddling" or "hopping over." For some poets and in some poems--such as Milton in Paradise Lost or Shelley in "Ode to the West Wind"--enjambment may occur in the majority of the lines, at least in certain passages. In other cases it may be a rare occurrence. In modern free verse, calculated enjambments constantly remind the reader that regular meter is being resolutely evaded. The opposite of the enjambed line is the end-stopped line.  Enjambment serves many purposes; in a speech in a Shakespeare play, a character may speak at first in stately end-stopped lines and then lose his temper and lapse into enjambed ones. In a poem by William Carlos Williams, enjambment can convey the inexorable power of nature in the progress of a season. See examples below.

                              Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
                            His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
                            Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
                            In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
                            Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
                            Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
                            That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
                            He lights--if it were land that ever burned
                            With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
                            And such appeared in hue as when the force
                            Of subterranean wind transports a hill
                            Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
                            Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
                            And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
                            Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
                            And leave a singed bottom all involved
                            With stench and smoke.

                                                                --Milton
                        *  *  *
     O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
     Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
     Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

     Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
     Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
     Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

     The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
     Each like a corpse within its grave, until
     Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

     Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
     (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
     With living hues and odours plain and hill:

     Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
     Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
                                        --Shelley
                    *   *   *

     By the road to the contagious hospital
      under the surge of the blue
      mottled clouds driven from the
      northeast--a cold wind. Beyond, the
      waste of broad, muddy fields
      brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
                                --William Carlos Williams

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