End-Stopped Lines

The "end-stopped" lines in the following poem are BOLD. They each start and end on the same line. They do not start on one line and continue into the next line (that is known as enjambment). 

The majority of Anne Sexton's poem (Her Kind) utilizes enjambment, while the last 2 lines of each stanza are "end-stopped" lines.

| = end-stopped line

Her Kind

by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.|

I have been her kind.|

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.|

I have been her kind.|

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.|

I have been her kind.|

Links

• Recognizing & Using Caesuras, Enjambment and End-Stopped Lines

(Most end-stopped lines are marked by punctuation but some aren’t. Remember, if you can finish the line without feeling as though some sense is missing, or if you can pause (as though there were a pause in the syntactic sense or comma), then the line is end-stopped.

| = end-stopped line

Are they in Arms? would he not send for me? |

Is this the honour of a Father’s name? |

In vain we travail to assuage their minds, 

As if their hearts whom neither Brother’s love, 

Nor Father’s awe, nor kingdom’s care can move, 

Our Councils could withdraw from raging heat. 

Jove slay them both, and end the cursed Line! |

For though perhaps fear of such mighty force 

As I my Lords, joined with your noble Aides, 

May yet raise, shall repent their present heat, 

The secret grudge and malice will remain. 

The fire not quenched, but kept in close restraint, 

Fed still within, breaks forth with double flame. |

Their death and mine must pease the angry gods. |