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Why can I find run on sentences in rabindranath tagore's poetry? Can I use them in my own poems? Grammatically correct or not?

Gitanjali excerpt (English version by Rabindranath Tagore)

Thou hast made me endless

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands, my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

The such sentence is a run on sentence. I think which is better here.

On the Seashore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous.

On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep.
Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets.
Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
Tempest roams in the pathless sky, Ships are wrecked in the trackless water, Death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children
many of them

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  • Yes, it's called poetic license.
    – ishtar
    Commented Sep 10 at 10:51

2 Answers 2

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Yes! Many famous English poems use long meandering sentences that ought to be broken up by punctuation to create a breathless 'stream of consciousness' effect. For example:

"Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz..."
-"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg

Further, a recognised literary device in poetry known as enjambment, where a line of the poem ends mid-sentence from a grammatical point of view, can create run-ons. For example:

"Was it for this
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flowed along my dreams?"
-"The Prelude" by William Wordsworth

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  • Enjambent is when the line ends not on a major syntactic boundary but in the middle of a phrase. A poem can employ enjambent while using short terse sentences that are not run-on.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 10 at 10:08
  • @TimR Agreed, but the effect of this can be run-ons. Consider "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot - "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain". If that were not poetry we would be counting the comma splices. These are effectively run-ons.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Sep 10 at 12:31
  • I would not be counting comma splices because there's only one independent clause in that sentence from Eliot.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 10 at 15:08
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In poetry there are no rules,
but those you make yourself!
So break the rules,
Ignore the fools
Leave grammar on the shelf.

No verb? Not a problem!
Write! Speak! Enjoy! Relax!
Just
one
word
per
line?
Who cares for English syntax?

In poetry there are no rules,
but those you make yourself!
So run-on run-on,
Be bold and strong.
And it doesn't have to rhyme.

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  • This view of poetry is very lopsided. Not all poetry plays with grammar in that manner.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 10 at 21:35
  • @TimR Actually, I think it's pretty funny and makes a point.
    – Lambie
    Commented Sep 10 at 22:29
  • @Lambie The point it makes describes one kind of poetry. But there are great poets whose poetry is grammatical and orderly and serious. Here are just a few names: Robert Graves, Marianne Moore, Ted Hughes, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Robert Browning, John Donne, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats. The view, quite often expressed on ELL, that with poetry "anything goes", needs to be balanced with an opposing view.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 11 at 0:38
  • With poetry, anything goes, including carefully following the rules of victorian grammar books. "There are no rules, but those you make yourself". But Yeats? He was pretty free. Look at mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-35293 It certainly isn't standard prose grammar or spelling.
    – James K
    Commented Sep 11 at 5:12
  • @TimR Fyi, I wrote poetry for years and those great poets are not in the right tradition re this answer. The answer brings to mind the tradition of nonsense poetry like Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Dr. Seuss, EE Cummings, sort of, and my favorite Edward Gorey. And I'd point out that the answer is completely grammatical. in fact.
    – Lambie
    Commented Sep 11 at 11:59

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