<snip>
With all respect to David, this reminds me a little of the line Auden
considered his worst: something very like "And Cynthia, whose leaping
breasts / I pursued all that autumn". [Alison]
<snip>
Isn't Auden's pursuit the other way round (.../'Pursued me through a
summer)?
At one point ('leaping breasts' for 'leaping beasts') this was a candidate
for Walker's Theory that many lines and phrases (good and bad) come about
through a sort of cognitive stumbling. Milton's 'new spangled' (< 'new
fangled'), for example.
CW
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