The sounds and
smells are realistic; one hears the boat cut harshly into the slushy
sand; the sharp scratch of the match; one inhales the thick, heavy
odor radiating from the sea-scented beach that has absorbed all day
the hot rays of the sun.
It is probable that the rendezvous is not at dusk, as is commonly
supposed, but at midnight. Owen Wister, in his fine novel, _The
Virginian_, speaks of the lover's journey as taking place at dusk.
Now the half-moon could not scientifically be low at that early hour,
and although most poets care nothing at all for the moon except as a
decorative object, Browning was generally precise in such matters. An
American poet submitted to the _Century Magazine_ a poem that was
accepted, the last line of each stanza reading
And in the west the waning moon hangs low.
One of the editorial staff remembered that the waning moon does not
hang low in the west; he therefore changed the word to "weary,"
which made the poet angry. He insisted that he was a poet, not a man
of science, and vowed that he would place his moon exactly where he
chose.
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