22. And lo, the tang of that wide insolence
23. Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught!
Note again the attitude of nature, as Hugh sees it, in its “wide insolence.”
25. How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky etc.
The cruelty of sentimentalism. Note on this page the steps by which the sense of thirst is induced in the reader and the corresponding disappointment increased; “dry as strewn bones bleaching to a desert sky,” “grateful ooze,” “sucked the mud,” “sweetish, tepid taste,” “taunted thirst,” “damp spots,” then the description of the pool and the “famished horses.” Is not the reader as thirsty as Hugh and nearly as keenly disappointed?
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8. Nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, etc.
Compare with Bryant’s “Forest Hymn.”
At what line does Hugh fall asleep? At what line does he begin to awake? How many days since “The Crawl” began?
17. And Hugh lay gazing till the whole resolved etc.