But he studied with care the sound of his words. Many
years ago, Mrs. Le Moyne, who has done so much to increase the
number of intelligent Browning lovers in America, met the poet in
Europe, and told him she would like to recite to him one of his own
poems. "Go ahead, my dear." So she began to repeat in her beautiful
voice _Meeting at Night_; she spoke the third line
And the little startled waves that leap
"Stop!" said Browning, "that isn't right." She then learned from him
the sharp difference between "little startled waves" as she read it,
and "startled little waves" as he wrote it. He was trying to produce
the effect of a warm night on the beach with no wind, where the tiny
wavelets simply crumble in a brittle fashion on the sand. "Startled
little waves" produces this effect; "little startled waves" does not.
The impressionistic colors in this poem add much to its effect; the
grey sea, the black land, the yellow moon, the fiery ringlets, the
blue spurt of the match, the golden light of morning.
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