Sunrise monostich

   the poplar trees   threw shadows

   longer than themselves

[Source: Aldous Huxley, Those Barren Leaves (1925), p. 249.
A familiar phenomenon, curiously expressed.
Cf. the idiom "punching above their weight".]

And compare:

From the crest of the Ciminian mountains

they first saw the sun.

[id., p. 331]