"she'll fall / in love." The enjambment here suggests the sense of time seeming to pass so quickly, from the perspective of a parent watching his child grow up. At one moment the child is still a toddler, learning to walk and falling over when she loses her balance, and the next moment the child is a teenager, falling "in love with cretins." When the clause, "she'll fall / in love" is interrupted after "fall," having followed the clause, "she'll learn some words," the reader will naturally assume that the "fall" describes the fall of a toddler learning to walk. However, the word "fall" immediately takes on a completely different, metaphorical meaning when it is continued on the next line, and followed with the words, "in love." Thus, in the time it takes to read the full clause, the reader will have processed both interpretations, mirroring the feeling that the father has, in hindsight, that his daughter has grown up so quickly.

There is another example of enjambment in the third stanza, where the phrase, "rue / nothing" begins at the end of the first line and continues at the beginning of the second. The pause at the end of the first line, after the word "rue," implies for a moment that the parents regret the time that has passed. However, when the phrase is continued on the next line, the reader understands that the parents actually regret "nothing." The initial surprise of the completely different meaning, in combination with the slight pause created by the line break, helps to make the idea that the parents have no regrets all the more emphatic.