FOOTNOTES:
[205:1] Very curious is the uncertainty which this stanza leaves in the minds of some. In Berdoe's Browning Cyclopædia the difficulty is frankly stated, with an exquisitely ludicrous result. He interprets the last line of Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is an instance of making obscurity where none really exists.
[208:1] Mr. Symons points out that in this extraordinary poem "fifteen stanzas succeed one another without a single full stop or a real break in sense or sound."