=1.= Blank as the face of fate. In listless mood etc.
Fate is associated with the inevitable and unrevealed. “In
listless mood” etc.—the end of a day of feverish dreams finds
Hugh weakened and caring less to live.
=3.= And met the night. The new moon, low and far, etc.
Note the phase of the moon.
=7.= The kiote voiced the universal lack.
Hunger.
=8.= As from a nether fire, the plain gave back
=9.= The swelter of the noon-glare to the gloom.
The heat of the prairie is often very noticeable after sunset.
=12.= Why seek some further nowhere on the plain?
What “nowhere”?
=14.= So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair;
Why “loose-lipped”?
=15.= And still Hugh moved, volitionless—a weight, etc.
Volitionless—The power of habit is compared to that of the moon
over the tides.
=18.= Now when the night wore on in middle swoon,
=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.