The editors replied, "You can have a waning moon in the west
in some magazines, perhaps, but you can not have it there in the
_Century_." So it was published "weary," as any one may see who
has sufficient time and patience.
Furthermore the contrast in this poem is not between evening and
morning, but between night and morning. The English commonly draw a
distinction between evening and night that we do not observe in
America. _Pippa Passes_ is divided into four sections, Morning, Noon,
Evening, Night. Furthermore the meeting is a clandestine one; not the
first one, for the man's soliloquy of his line of march shows how
often he has travelled this way before, and now his eager mind,
leaping far ahead of his feet, repeats to him each stage of the
journey. The cottage is shrouded in absolute darkness until the
lover's tap is heard; then comes the sound and the sight of the match,
and the sudden thrill of the mad embrace, when the wild heart-beats
are louder than the love-whispers.
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