Vsp St. 34: "very were they sturdy"

[jgnewman]

I understand what you're doing with word order at this point and I don't disagree with it as long as the phrase is comprehensible, which this is. But some of the ordering is unusual enough that I would suggest adding to your overall intro that the reader should expect some unusual word ordering and that this is done in order to preserve the right emphasis on the right words as we see in the poetry.