THE MOON
(To the Editor of The London Mercury)
Sir,—I do not know whether the scope of your "Correspondence" pages is intended to admit small criticisms of the original pieces of poetry and imaginative prose which you publish. If it is, I would beg leave to offer two perhaps niggling comments upon The Moon.
(1) In Stanza 22, "Emperor" is a fine word and perhaps inevitable: but would it be merely pedantic to remind the poet that when Bonaparte was in Egypt in 1798 he was not yet Emperor, nor even First Consul?
(2) In Stanza 30, eighth line, does not grammar require the reading "but thee" instead of "but thou"? "But" here is a preposition, not a conjunction—in spite of the "Boy on the Burning Deck." Burns (I think) has a line somewhere that clearly shows the true usage:
"Live but thee I canna——"
i.e., "without thee." I do not think "but" in such a phrase can rightly be construed as merely equivalent to "and not."—Yours, etc.,
A. F. G.
December 12th, 1919.