It may be that an obtuse man upon the deck of a steamer would interrupt his sweetheart’s
flight of poesy to envelop her in a shawl, but the details of the matter may well be left to the imagination. It is doubtless one of those passages which seem to a writer to give reality to a picture, but afterward smile at him sardonically from the printed page. Mr. Roberts inclines elsewhere in the same poem to be too explicit; after a most exalted declaration, he says:
No, do not move! Alone although we be
I dare not touch your hand; your gown’s dear hem
I will not touch lest I should break my dream
And just an empty deck-chair mock my longing.
Here again it was scarcely necessary to qualify the chair, and indeed the whole passage savors of melodrama. These are, however, only such lines as show that to the one relating a matter the least incident may appear to lend reality to the setting, whereas to the reader the detail may violate taste.
The opening stanza, mentioned as one of the truly subtle bits of the poem in question, has these fine lines:
As the will of last year’s wind,
As the drift of the morrow’s rain,