Handbook of Finnish, 2nd edition, section 19 Poetic features:

Poetic language

In poems and songs, the language differs from standard Finnish in several ways, though unsystematically:

word order very often differs from the normal order, usually without any specific emphasis intended, just for the rhythm
colloquial forms are frequent, e.g. mä instead of minä
in particular, final vowels are often omitted, e.g. tuoll (often written with an apostrophe, tuoll’, in old texts) instead of tuolla
rare, old, or dialectal inflected or derived forms are used, especially when that helps to make the number of syllables suitable, e.g. the genitive plural kansain instead of the much more common kansojen or the superlative kaunehin instead of kaunein
words may be used in otherwise different forms, often due to the requirements of rhythm and phonetic appearance, e.g. oisi instead of olisi, ma instead of mä, and ompi instead of on
old words are used often; some of them are distinctly poetic now, such as hurme instead of veri (blood), armas instead of rakas (dear, beloved), and tuoni instead of kuolema (death).

The following table contains the start of an old melancholic song (Syyspihlajan alla, “Under the autumn rowan”), the same text in normal prose style, and an English prose translation.

Song text	In prose style	Prose translation
Punertaa marjat pihlajain kuin verta niillä ois.	Pihlajien marjat punertavat kuin niillä olisi verta.	Berries of rowans are red as if there were blood on them.
On kurkiaurat lentäneet jo yli pääni pois.	Kurkiaurat ovat jo lentäneet pois pääni yli.	The wedges of cranes have already flown over my head.
Mukaansa ei mua ottaneet ne maihin kaukaisiin.	Ne eivät ottaneet minua mukaansa kaukaisiin maihin.	They did not take me with them to distant lands.
Saa siivettömät tyytyä maan kylmän kahleisiin.	Siivettömät saavat tyytyä kylmän maan kahleisiin.	The wingless have to accept the chains of the cold ground.

The example demonstrates how the word order can be the most challenging factor, when you read or listen to poetic Finnish. In the example, the other deviations from standard Finnish are minor: the old-fashioned plural genitive pihlajain instead of pihlajien, the colloquial ois instead of olisi, the colloquial mua instead of minua, the colloquial use of singular verb forms (punertaa, on, saa) even when the subject is in plural, and the mixed-style ei ottaneet (instead of standard eivät ottaneet and colloquial ei ottanu).

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