21. To breathe became an act of conscious will.
22. The starry waste was ominously still.
24. As through a tunnel in the atmosphere—
Note the steps of the coming storm: middle swoon, a drowsy night, stifling condition of the air, utter silence with sense of impending disaster, as through a tunnel, etc.
The description of the storm is exact to the minutest detail. It is not interspersed with more or less sentimental comments as is Byron’s description of the storm on the Alps (Childe Harold, Canto III), yet it gains in power by its adherence to truth.
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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”?