Sidney Sperry writes that one of the intimate glimpses we get of Nephi's soul is found in 2 Nephi 4:16-35, which passage we may call "The Psalm of Nephi." [Sidney Sperry, Book of Mormon Compendium, p. 152]
According to an article by Steven Sondrup, rhythm, meter, alliteration, assonance, and rhyme are some of the ways most familiar to modern readers in which the poet can pattern his language; however, they are by no means the only possibilities at his disposal. In the "Psalm of Nephi," just as in Hebrew poetry, an intricately patterned system of ideational parallels is the essence of lyricism. Logical, formal, or conceptual units are set parallel to one another rather than acoustic properties as in the case with rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. This use of ideational parallelism in Hebrew poetry was first noticed by medieval Jewish biblical scholars during the eighteenth century.
The basic characteristics of the parallelism of the "Psalm of Nephi" can easily be seen in what may well serve as the first of four stanzas of the psalm:
Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord: and
My heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord
in showing me his great and marvelous work
My heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!
Yea my heart sorroweth because of my flesh;
My soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
By reading these words as they were intended to be read (in a chiastic manner) the reader is able to come to a most profound understanding of the meaning of the text and the richest appreciation of its significance. [Steven P. Sondrup, "The Psalm of Nephi: A Lyric Reading," in BYU Studies, Summer 1981, pp. 359, 362, 372]