Chapter VI: Canto III: ), yet it gains in power by its adherence to truth

PAGE 49

=4.= An oily film seemed spread upon the sky

Storm still approaching. “The oily film,” the gradual darkening
of the atmosphere.

=9.= Upon hell’s burlesque sabbath for the lost,

What could be more hopeless than “Sabbath in Hell”?

=12.= Hugh chose not, yet he crawled;

Habit keeps him moving.

=13.= He felt the futile strife was nearly o’er.

Hugh will die unless relief comes.

=14.= And as he went, a muffled rumbling grew,

Far away thunder, the next step in the approach of the storm.

=16.= Somehow ‘twas coextensive with his thirst,

Confusion of objective and subjective, a not uncommon experience
of extreme weakness.

PAGE 50

=12.= Star-hungry, ranged in regular array, etc.

Note the use of constellations to indicate the vast expanse and
swift movement of the cloud; another illustration of the poet’s
power to see things in the large. Locate the constellations
named.

Explain the figure, “star-hungry.”

=19.= Deep in the further murk sheet-lightning flared.

Sheet-lightning—covering the sky like a sheet, sometimes called
heat lightning—a common phenomenon in prairie storms.

=24.= What turmoil now? Lo, ragged columns hurled, etc.

Explain “ragged columns.”

PAGE 51

=2.= Along the solid rear a dull boom runs!

Explain “solid rear.”

=11.= Reveals the butte-top tall and lonely there

=12.= Like some gray prophet contemplating doom.

The second time the butte has been described.

=16.= Ghosts of the ancient forest—or old rain, etc.

Geology tells us that these plains were once covered with
forests.

=19.= That e’er evolving, ne’er resolving sound

=20.= Gropes in the stifling hollow of the night.

Never fully developing. “Evolving,” “resolving”—technical
expressions in music.

PAGE 52

The rush of the rain, the constant flare of lightning, the sudden cessation, as well as the slow and dread beginning, are characteristic of storms in semi-arid countries. This poem reveals every phase of nature on the prairies and none more vividly than the storm.

Define: hurtling, wassail, sardonic, flaw, ravin, murk, cosmic, sodden.

PAGE 53

=3.= The butte soared, like a soul serene and white

=4.= Because of the katharsis of the night.

The butte appears again, this time as the symbol of a soul that
has struggled and triumphed. The principle of Katharsis,
purification, is a principle of the Greek drama as worked out by
Aristotle. To what degree is it a principle of life?

=5.= All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on

Which day? Why does Hugh no longer travel at night?

=16.= Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came

=17.= Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled.

Explain.

=18.= Then hate and hunger merged; etc.

Note again that Hugh finds Jamie’s treachery everywhere. It is
an obsession with him.

Define “amethyst.”

PAGE 54

How many days has Hugh crawled? How far has he journeyed?

=5.= Swooped by. The dream of crawling and the act etc.

An appeal to the muscular sense.

Such dreams bespeak extreme weariness.

=8.= The butte, outstripped at eventide, now seemed etc.

The butte now becomes the measure of a progress infinitely slow,
a source of discouragement.

=13.= Whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace.

Why “hand-in-pocket”?

=16.= What rest and plenty on the other side!

Hugh must have encouragement. The break in the prairie, the
crest of the divide, furnishes that. Explain the psychology. How
far is the divide from the Grand?

=20.= All day it seemed that distant Pisgah Height

Why “Pisgah”?

Define “lush.”

PAGE 55

Hugh is near to starvation. The adventure with the gopher goes from waking reality to dream on the following night and to waking dream the next day, revealing how sick Hugh had become.

=10.= The battered gray face leered etc.

Note that the vivid picture of the face of Hugh is secured by
the choice of a few meaningful words, battered, leered, slaver,
anticipating jaws.

=13.= Evolving twilight hovered to a pause

The twilight pause means what?

=18.= Hugh jerked the yarn. It broke.

Note the brevity of the climax, “It broke.”

=19.= Down swooped the night,

How many days of journeying? The dream is a nightmare while the
previous one was relatively peaceful. Why the difference?

PAGE 56

=3.= Woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn

What “hordes of laughers”?

=5.= Dream dawn, dream-noon, dream-twilight!

Night and day are “telescoped” for Hugh by the monotony of
crawling either awake or in dreams and never getting anywhere.

=17.= Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-night! And still obsessed

Why the repetition?

=18.= By that one dream more clamorous than the rest,

What is the one dream? Why is it a dream?

Define: gully, turbid, relict.

PAGE 57

=3.= Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him,

=4.= And now the brutal fact had come to stare.

What was the “pleasant lie”? The brutal fact?

=7.= And nursed that deadly adder of the soul,

=8.= Self-pity. Let the crows swoop down and feed, etc.

Sentimentalism is soul-flabbiness.

=15.= And lo, a finger-nail, etc.

The accumulation of great results by infinitesimal accretions is
one of the everlasting surprises in life.

=21.= So fare the wise on Pisgah.

How do the wise use their Pisgahs? To enjoy or to inspire to
further effort?

Define: facture, dwarfed, Titan, triumvirate.

PAGE 58

=2.= Some higher Hugh observed the baser part.

What was the higher, what the baser part?

=3.= So sits the artist throned above his art, etc.

The hurt is nothing, the achievement is all. No man who is worth
anything but counts his work as more than all else.

=5.= It seemed the wrinkled hills pressed in to stare, etc.

The manifestations of nature become Hugh’s audience and he falls
into the throes of composition. Most of our thinking is in words
uttered to persons present, absent, or imagined.

=11.= So wrought the old evangel of high daring, etc.

The true philosophy of life, to be a “victor in the moment.”

=23.= That day the wild geese flew

What is the effect of their cries? Describe the appearance of
the sky.

Define: recks, travail, evangel.

PAGE 59

Present, past and fancy are all mingled in Hugh’s experiences this day, showing his weakened condition, and the feeling for Jamie obsesses him.

=9.= Hate slept that day,

Was it hate or an inversion of love?

=18.= At last the buzzard beak no longer tore

What “buzzard beak”?

Define: lethargy, maudlin.

PAGE 60

=4.= And now serenely beautiful etc.

These lines were suggested to the author by a picture, “The
Death of Absalom.”

=6.= Thus vexed with doleful whims the crawler went etc.

Hugh would have died at this time had he not drifted into the
rugged vale.

=11.= Told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day.

Why “gray-winged”?

=20.= It seemed no wind had ever come that way,

=21.= Nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place.

How is utter quiet expressed!

PAGE 61

=7.= Returning hunger bade him rise; in vain

=8.= He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain etc.

An appeal to muscular sense.

=16.= In that hip-wound he had for Jamie’s sake

That “hip-wound” brings back the desire for revenge, a close
association of ideas. Have you had such experiences?

=19.= Was turned again with every puckering twinge.

“Puckering twinge,” another appeal to muscular sense.

=20.= Far down the vale a narrow winding fringe etc.

Having passed the divide Hugh slept at the head of a valley that
farther down becomes the bed of a little creek flowing into the
Moreau.

Define: mesh, trammelled, puckering, betokened.

PAGE 62

=6.= These two, as comrades, struggled south together—

Contrast the two “comrades,” each journeying to the many
fathomed peace, one consumed with “lust to kill,” the other
singing on the way. A bit of wise philosophy is suggested.

=9.= And one went crooning of the moon-wooed vast;

What is the “moon-wooed vast” and to what is it compared?

PAGE 63

=12.= All streams ran thin; and when he pressed a hand etc.

Why did he do this?

=20.= Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow,

Another of many sunset pictures in the poem and no two are
alike. “Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow,” a prairie
sunset in one line.

=24.= Hugh saw what seemed the tempest of a dream

Why a “dream” tempest?

Define: phasic, weather-breeding.

PAGE 64

=3.= A dust cloud deepened down the dwindling river;

=4.= Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver etc.

Note the pictures suggested in “dust cloud deepened,” “upon the
distant tree-tops ran a shiver,” “huddle thickets writhed,”
“green gloom gapes,” “mill and wrangle in a turbid flow.”

=13.= Bound for the winter pastures of the Platte!

The Platte was an especially fine bison country.

=17.= The lopped moon weltered in the dust-bleared East.

How long since Hugh began his journey?

=18.= Sleep came and gave a Barmecidal feast.

In the Arabian Nights one of the Barmecides, a wealthy family,
served a beggar a pretended feast on beautiful dishes that were
empty.

=19.= About a merry flame were simmering etc.

The appeal to the sense of hunger is powerful. Compare Vergil,
Æneid, Book I, 210–215.

=21.= And tender tongues that never tasted snow,

Why “never tasted snow”?

PAGE 65

=2.= So sounds a freshet when the banks are full etc.

Note comparison of the movement of the herd to a swollen river
clogged by débris.

=8.= Through which the wolves in doleful tenson tossed

Tenson: among the troubadours a contest between two singers.

=9.= From hill to hill the ancient hunger-song.

Hunger is the oldest form of suffering, and prayer for food the
oldest prayer.

=15.= With some gray beast that fought with icy fang.

Why “icy” fang? “white world”?

Define: eerie, myriads.

PAGE 66

=8.= The herd would pass and vanish in the night

How long was the herd in passing?

During this time, and for fifty years thereafter, bison herds
often covered the plains as far as the eye could see. In the
60’s travellers on the old Oregon trail often journeyed through
one solid herd for as much as three days, and on either side the
prairie was filled to the horizon.

=23.= So might a child assail the crowding sea!

The comparison of the on-rushing herd to high sea tide, notable
in itself, is greatly strengthened by the comparison of Hugh to
a child assaulting the waters. Note the impulse of the defeated
to act in absurd ways. Note the epithet, “crowding.”

PAGE 67

=2.= Slept till the white of morning o’er the hill

=3.= Was like a whisper groping in a hush.

The comparison of light to sound, “the white of morning like a
whisper,” is unusual but true.

=4.= The stream’s low trill seemed loud.

Why seemed the low trill loud?

=9.= Smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew etc.

What association of sensations brings the picture of the autumn
fields?

Note how quickly the vision passed, an illustration of the
author’s power of concentration. Hugh was born in Pennsylvania.
What was his father’s business? How do you know from this and
other passages? See the lyrical passage on page 47.

=15.= He brooded on the mockeries of Chance,

On page 58 we saw Hugh in the act of literary composition; now
we see him a philosopher. This is a common fact among what we
call the “common” people. Note the grave-digger scene in Hamlet,