Readers are invited to identify the sources of the three quotations which follow, and to send us the answers so that they reach this office not later than July 17. A prize of Pounds 20 is offered for the first correct set of answers opened on that date, or, failing that, the most nearly correct, inwhch case, the quality of the guesswork will be taken into account..
Entries, marked "Author, Author 908" on the envelope, should be addressed to the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1 9XY. The solution will appear on July 24.
1 I came not here on such a trivial toy
As a stray'd Ewe, or to pursue the stealth
Of pilfering Woolf . . . .
2 The Lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe -
3 A forster was he, soothly, as I gesse.
ANSWERS COMPETITION NO 904 WINNER: JOHN AND KEITH SAILING
1 I heard the tune he sang me,
And spied his yellow bill;
I picked a stone and aimed it
And threw it with a will:
Then the bird was still.
A. E. Housman, "When smoke stood up from Ludlow", A Shropshire Lad.
2 I used to think about God and fancy that I was very wicked, and one day when I threw a stone and hit a duck in the yard by mischance and broke its wing I was full of wonder when I was told that the duck would be cooked for dinner and that I should not be punished.
W. B. Yeats, "Reveries over Childhood and Youth - 1914", Autobiographies.
3 The man who brings our milk up from the village
Pours it like a libation. On the brow
Of the hill a goatherd greets us with a
blessing.
The buying of figs is a ceremony of gods.
But yesterday I threw a stone at a brilliant bird, unthinkingly;
Then thanked God trembling that it missed.
D. J. Enright, "The Peaceful Island".