Sentence No. 154 · 28 August 2026
The snowflakes, suddenly arriving on the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows, then were gone, and a drop of water was crawling down the glass
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence — Sons and Lovers (1913) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The subject 'the snowflakes' is separated from its verb 'clung' by a descriptive phrase fenced off with commas — so a fragment ending in a comma that begins with a participle like 'suddenly arriving' belongs in the middle, never at either end.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A recovering child watches winter weather through a bedroom window. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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