End-stopped line A poetic line that has a pause at the end. End-stopped lines reflect normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation. The first line of Keats' "Endymion" is an example of an end-stopped line; the natural pause coincides with the end of the line, and is marked by a period:
A thing of beauty is a joy
forever.
The definitions in this glossary were adapted from The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Sixth Edition, by Michael Meyer