As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a spring, As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or anything. We die, As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain, Or as the pearls of morning's dew Ne'er to be found again. Stanzas serve two purposes. The first is musical.
Stanzas enable poets to fashion verbal harmonies difficult to achieve in non-stanzaic verse.
Stanzas permit them to play with patterns of rhymes and to mix together lines of different lengths. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words. A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, Comes softly rattling down. And when I'm visiting the garden ground, The birds that rise from tangled, withered weeds Make sounds as sad as words could ever make. The second key function of stanzas is indicated by the origin of the term.