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SLIPS POETS HAVE MADE.

Some curious little slips that poets have made in descriptive passages are pointed out by Mr. Henry Osborne, in the “Leisure Hour,” Most- of the examples, as might be expected, are either impossible combinations of natural phenomena or anachronisms To' the former class belongs the slip in the . following lines of Hogg, the Ettriok Shepherd:— Late, late in ■ the gloaming, when all was still, ‘ When the fringe was red on the Westlan hill, • The wood was sere, the moon i’ ■ the wane, The reek o’ the cot hung o’er the plain Like a little wee cloud in the -warld its lane. Everybody knows, says Mr Osborn (but we doubt it), that when the moon is on the wane it is not visible in the evening at all : it does not rise till midnight or morning. Coleridge also was tripped up by the moon, if we may say so-. In the “Ancient Mariner” he wrote:—■ Till clomb above'the eastern bar The horned moon with one bright star Within the nether tip. Quite impossible, says Mr Osborne; the dark apparent space between the tips of the crescent moon is really- the solid body of the planet, through which no star could shine. Of a different character is the -minute slip which ha® been ingeniously depicted in one of Longfellow’s slavery poems :-M The Planter, under his roof of thatch, Smoked thoughtfully and slow;. The Slavers thumb'was on the latch, He seemed in haste to go. The siLaver is inside the planter’s hut,, and the part of the latch which was to be pressed downwards with the thumb is always, placed outside. On the inside the latch is lifted with the finger. In the ballad of “Young Lochinvar” Scott tells how— So light to the croup the fair lady he swung. •• So light to the saddle before her he sprung. A feat of horsemanship, observes Mr Osborne, which is physically impossible. It is difficult to prove a negative, but Mr Osborne assures that- neither Wordsworth, nor Burns, nor Shakespeare, haa a single solecism in description® of the seasonal aspects of nature.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZMAIL19050823.2.48.4

Bibliographic details

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 15

Word Count
352

SLIPS POETS HAVE MADE. New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 15

SLIPS POETS HAVE MADE. New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 15

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