Can the phrase, "bred as we" obey grammatical rule?
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
This is Emily Dickinson's poem. I somewhat understand the meaning of the bolded part but still don't know how come this phrase is possible grammatically? Can I see it as an adjective phrase?
Solution 1:
This is a subtle blending of two devices— one rhetorical and the other linguistic— to give a thorough poetic touch to the line.
The two devices being:
Anastrophe
Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words; for example,
“Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear” (Alexander Pope).
[American Heritage Dictionary]
and
Zero Copula
In grammar, zero copula refers to the absence of an explicit auxiliary verb (usually a form of the verb be) in certain constructions where it is customarily found in standard English. Also called copula deletion or understood copula.
[ThoughtCo.]