Re: "Difficult" clauses

Hi!

Philip Newton writes:
> On 5/10/07, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:
> > I'd suggest that one poem with "up from out of in under" or what it was
> > again.
>
> I don't know of a poem, but that line reminds me of the question "What
> did you bring the book that I didn't want to be read to out of up
> for?"
You don't know *that* poem??

Actually, there are two versions and I don't know which one is the
original.  Maybe someone knows?  I don't want to let Google count the
votes...

Here it is:

V1:

Once I lost a preposition.
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily, I cried, "Perdition!
Up from out of in under there!"

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And dangling phrases I abhor.
But still I wonder, what should he come
Up from out of in under for?

Morris Bishop, American linguist, The New Yorker, 1947

----------------------------------------------------------------------
V2:

I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair
And angrily I cried, 'Perdition
Up from out of in under there'.

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, 'What should he come
Up from out of in under for?'


**Henrik