"Next day brought clouds, a wrack like smoke flying low. Rain-showers slashed. They made mud of a road that had become a mere track. It wound among fields gone back to weeds. Wind skirled through scattered hursts, tossing their leaves like beggars' rags." (p. 48)
Does that passage have the rhythm of verse?
"Next day brought clouds,
"A wrack like smoke
"Flying low.
"Rain-showers slashed.
"They made mud of a road
"That had become a mere track.
"It wound among fields
"Gone back to weeds.
"Wind skirled through scattered hursts,
"Tossing their leaves
"Like beggars' rags." (?)
We expect rain and wind to bear bad news. Sure enough, the paragraph continues:
"Twice the wayfarers spied burnt-out farmsteads in the offing. War, a feud, or robbers from the hinterland had passed through here." (ibid.)
Times are bad. Hadding returns to set them right. The paragraph concludes:
"Hadding and Hardgreip clutched their spears and spurred their horses onward." (ibid.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I think you are right, much of Anderson's prose could be rearranged as verse. Possibly accidental in WAR OF THE GODS, almost certainly deliberate in A MIDSUMMER TEMPEST, much of which was written in barely disguised blank verse.
Ad astra! Sean
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