o come o come emmanuel
and ransome captive israel
who mourns in lonely exile here
until the son of god appear
specifically, was trying to figure out why the final verb of the stanza should be plural and not singular, until i realised that this was probably an analagous construction to the one choonping eekia and i had had a discussion over not two months ago, that is, the bit from 'and is it true' that goes:
the maker of the stars and sea
become a child on earth for me
where 'become' (choonping explained) is not a verb at all but a more adjectival-like thing (sidebar: consulted mother about what exactly it is and got into head-spinning argument about what the word "won" is in the sentence "the battle is won").
on top of the grammatical muddle, carol lyrics, i have found, have terribly tricky syntax too - for instance:
what child is this, who laid to rest on mary's lap is sleeping,
whom angels greet, with anthems sweet, while shepherd's watch are keeping?
no matter how hard you try to untwist that pretzel of a question, you just can't ask it in a more straightforward way. i love it. people need to appreciate these things more.
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