A word for that

I think in life we all have those moments in life. Perhaps it's but an air of nostalgia, where we realize something that was never can be again -- where we lament the loss but accept the progress and meaning that moment gave us.

Have you ever heard the phrase "mono no aware [物の哀れ]?"

Back when I was in college, I took a Japanese culture class which discussed the idea.  It was a term coined by Motoori Norinaga, a Japanese author from the Edo period, meant to describe those bittersweet emotions we feel when something dear to us comes to an end.  

License to kill (the language)

There's this thing in poetry called poetic license. (You've likely heard of it.) But it basically gives a writer free reign to massage, mangle, and manipulate the use of language for so-called "artistic effect." It's the reason I began the previous sentence with the word "but" (much to my English teacher's chagrin) -- mostly I just liked the rhythm and flow better with the extra word.

But beginning a sentence with an unnecessary conjunction is a pretty tame example. Writers, especially poets, can often take this license to the extreme -- using words solely for their sound, discarding their meaning, redefining them, even respelling them.