Anger made him strong, while grief made him weak. Is that not true to nature?
=7.= Now once again he scanned the yellow plain, etc.
Hugh projects his subjective condition on nature. This idea occurs often in the poem. Is it a true conception?
=14.= Alas for those who fondly place above, etc.
A continuation of the philosophy found on page 32. Love is the supreme thing, not the person who is loved. The way is itself the goal.
=19.= A bitter-sweet narcotic to the will, etc.
Note how Hugh’s hate arouses his energies. For his purposes it is stronger than love.
Define: bellowsed, regenerating, lethargy, conspirant, merging, vulnerable, narcotic.
The final horror, his face, fixes Hugh’s hate to a steady, burning purpose, seeming equal to his task.
=5.= That waste to be surmounted as a wall,
=6.= Sky-rims and yet more sky-rims steep to climb—
In gazing across a vast space to the horizon, one seems to be looking uphill. This is especially noticeable on the ocean.
One traveling long distances by his own power, and having no means of measurement, conceives space not in miles, but in duration of effort.
=8.= The hundred empty miles ‘twixt him and where
=11.= One hairsbreadth farther from the earth and sky
He was as remote from all things as it was possible to be, so why not try!
The Crawl is the most detailed account of physical suffering and endurance extant in poetry. Note the large number of words that make direct appeal to the sensations of thirst, weariness, chronic pain, fever, delirium. Again the sense of loneliness, of betrayal, of a conspiracy to destroy him appears everywhere in Hugh’s experience. The monotony of the journey appears in its slowness, which is indicated in many ways.
Before describing the Crawl, Neihardt first found out what vegetable growths would be found on the trail, the character of the soil, how the streams would erode, etc. The poet is true to all nature, even natural science.
=3.= And through it ran the short trail to the goal.
What was the “goal”? Ree villages lay nearly directly east.
=4.= Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll:
=7.= Should make their foe the haunter of a tale.
Hugh was killed on the Yellowstone by the Rees in 1832.
=9.= The scoriac region of a hell burned black