(Ignoring all Diana's comments on this.)

The present tense in English (as in most languages) has a number of
different uses, and identifying the use in a particular case offers or
can offer interpretive problems, especially when, as here, there is a
deliberate departure from normal English word order of
subject-verbv-object. Obmect-subject-verb wold be perfectly normal and
non-ambiguous in Latin, That English has an objective (accusative) case
in pronouns (though not in nouns) makes the Latin word order possible
here, and the use of non-English word order is surely the most strikig
feature of the phrase. US he devours -- ie., not "them." But since the
antecedent of "he" is itself an interpretive crux it's hard to know
where to_begin_ om cconstruing the phrase, that is, which is the
dependent, which the independent variable here. Le's leave the puzzle
regarding "he" aside for a moment and focus on the word order and the
verb. "Devours" here has an iterative feel: He is in the practice of
devouring, not just anyoen, but _us_ (emphasized by word order). The
iterative feel and the emphasis on us (rather than someone else)
suggests something like an regularly repaeated action, annual in this
case.

I don't know where to take it from here, except to note that here we
have the kind of ambguity Empson was concerned with -- ambiguities that
_function_ significanty in the text, not ambiguties 5that are pulled out
of the air for the fun of it by someone who just thinks ambiguity
regardless of purpose is groovy. Weighing the various alternatives is
clearly part of theaction that counts in this poem: not the action mimed
by the poem (there is none) but the action of reading. Like so many
romantic and modernist poems, the poem is about the act of reading (we
are back to cunning passages).

*Carrol