he was slipping, that night, on the damp ferny flank of Mt. Mandevil (see note to line 149), and next day, at a more eerie altitude, in the heady blue, where the mountaineer becomes aware of a phantom companion. Many times that night our King cast himself upon the ground with the desperate resolution of resting there till dawn that he might shift with less torment what hazard soever he ran. (I am thinking of yet another Charles, another long dark man above two yards high.) But it was all rather physical, or neurotic, and I know perfectly well that my King, if caught and condemned and led away to be shot, would have behaved as he does in lines 606-608: thus he would look about him with insolent composure, and thus he would
Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride The dedicated imbeciles and spit Into their eyes just for the fun of it
Let me close this important note with a rather anti-Darwinian aphorism: The one who kills is always his victim's inferior. Line 603: Listen to distant cocks crow One will recall the admirable image in a recent poem by Edsel Ford:
And often when the cock crew, shaking fire Out of the morning and the misty mow
A mow (in Zemblan muwan) is the field next to a barn. Lines 609-614: Nor can one help, etc. This passage is different in the draft:
609
Nor can one help the exile caught by death In a chance inn exposed to the hot breath Of this America, this humid night: Through slatted blinds the stripes of colored light Grope for his bed - magicians from the past With philtered gems - and life is ebbing fast. http://www.en8848.com.cn/『原版英语』