Mondegreens by needlelight

[larryhammer]

The delights of Come Hither include not just the extensive and perceptive selection of poetry, but the extensive and eccentric endnotes: 300 pages for under 500 pages of poems, in my edition. A line of Blake can provoke Walter de la Mare into a dozen-page anthology of moral verse from samplers of the 17th–19th centuries. Such as this one from Caroline Codling's "pretty and skilful piece of needlework (enriched with flower-baskets, vases, small birds and large peacocks)":

Assist Me While I wander Here
  Amidre Sworld of Cares
Incline My Heart to Pray With Love
  And Then Accept My Prayers.

In the words of the editor, "But what did 'Amidre Sworld' mean for her?"

---L.