Re: "Woe to his sight"

"Skitt" <skitt99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:aK-dnZtsS6_mOYrVnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Scott H wrote:

Is "woe to his sight" correct usage of English? I need to know for a
poem I'm writing.

I have no clue of what it might mean.

We have to use a bit of imagination: e.g. we might
write that something woeful like a battlefield presented
"woe to his sight." SH's actual lines
He made us with siblings and fathers and mothers
But woe to his sight as he had finished his plan
For he could not create one without creating all others.
seem to invite revision, e.g. (1)
But woe to his sight as he had finished his plan
would scan rather better if it read
But woe to his sight as he finished his plan
(2) These lines seem not quite to say what the author intends,
e.g. "finishing his plan" has a meaning different from "finishing
his work" (as seems intended here.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)


.

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