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I noticed this pattern in Auden's poetry where the last line in a verse will be much shorter than preceding lines. Here is one of the earliest examples, taken from Paid on Both Sides:

Here a scrum breaks up like a bomb, there troops
Deploy like birds. But proudest into traps
Have fallen. These gears which ran in oil for a week
By week, needing no look, now will not work;
These manors mortgaged twice to pay for love
Go to another. <<<

This is definitely not enjambment. The closest thing that I could find is catalexis, which describes a line of verse lacking one syllable, but this is not quite right since the last line is often shorter by much more than just one syllable.

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    Catalectic = lacking one syllable, brachycatalectic = lacking two syllables. Some sources say that catalexis can refer to any number of syllables lacking. – Rand al'Thor Sep 04 '21 at 06:32
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    It appears to present a variant of a Sapphic stanza with an "adonic" final line. – henryflower Sep 04 '21 at 09:05
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    This isn't really an example of "the last line in a verse will be much shorter than the previous lines". This is blank verse, where the break between stanzas happens in the middle of a line. Here is a longer section of this poem: "These manors mortgaged twice to pay for love // Go to another. // ..................O how shall man live // Whose thought is born, child of one farcical night, // To find him old?" See how the five syllables of "Go to another" combine with those of "O how shall man live" to form a line of iambic pentameter. This isn't new; Shakespeare did this in his plays. – Peter Shor Sep 05 '21 at 15:29
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    For a better example of short last lines, consider Poe's poem To Helen. "Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche // How statue-like I see thee stand, // The agate lamp within thy hand! // Ah, Psyche, from the regions which // Are Holy-Land!" – Peter Shor Sep 05 '21 at 15:32

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