I bought an old book of poems
By Walter de la Mare
And thought it a great thing
With my beloved to share,
...
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Stanza 7: I THINK I'd change 'about' to 'that'. What a tangled web I've spun! Stanza 8: Ok, maybe 'money back' if you return to.....whom? ? ? I'd say 'on', not 'in', the rack.
Yeah, actually good suggestions: will do. Do I really hope to get my money back by returning to 'crooked reseller'? Not really.
(cont.) ...maybe adding 'from' after 'pilfered' is a solution. // AND again, in Stanza 6, It sounds to me as though you are defining 'pilfer' as '(to be) stolen from'. rather than as 'to steal'.
Pilfered 'by' refers to the culprit, whereas pilfered 'from' refers to the victim. So the original owner's book would appear to have indeed been pilfered "by" that infamous greedy Camden lot! , though I could be wrong.
Stanza 4: If I understand 'lot', I say there are words missing to make this stanza grammatically correct. Hmmm? : )
'Lot' in this context is, admittedly, an UK slang meaning 'a group of people'; e.g.: What a sorry lot!
Walter de la Mare, born on April 25,1873 in London, is considered one of modern literature's chief exemplars of the romantic imagination.'
Why not use the alleged 'torture' by ants? I heard that some Native Americans/American Indians [and maybe also some 'white men'] would bury a prisoner in sand/dirt except for their face and drip ant-luring honey on the poor person's face. Yikes! !