m the value of completeness:

My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,
And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it
spent;
And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side.

Note the momentary completeness on "ten," "cold," "bent," and "spent,"
requiring the falling inflection.

If on the other hand an idea is incomplete, either pointing forward to
some other idea or being subordinate, the voice has the upward slide
or rising inflection. The rising inflection, like the falling, may be
long or short, more or less abrupt, according to the importance of the
thought:

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow.

"She" points forward to the predicate "felt" and because of the
importance of the idea it takes a long rising inflection; "with all a
monarch's pride" being subordinate and incomplete also requires the
voice to be kept up, but takes a shorter rising inflection.

It is of the greatest importance to know the exact purpose of the
thought, so that the voice may, of itself, give the corresponding
inflection:

And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer queen.

The sense is evidently not complete in the first line, the intention
being to emphasize the beauty of the garlands to be gathered, and not
merely to state that they may be gathered there. When the reader
understands the exact meaning he will convey it by keeping the rising
inflection on "garlands."

Similar to the foregoing is the following:

There is not a wife in the west country
But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.

The sense is not complete until we read the second line. The rising
inflection on "country" indicates this and connects the first line
with the second, bringing out the meaning, that every wife in the west
country has heard of the Well of St. Keyne.

Sometimes we have a series of rising inflections, all pointing forward
to the leading statement which is to follow and which is necessary to
complete the sense, for example:

Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse.

Incompleteness may be suggested by a negative statement or its
equivalent:

Not