At the beginning of Chapter Ten of Madeline Miller’s Circe, the protagonist arrives in Crete, the island that her domineering sister rules oppressively. Upon docking at the bustling city port, Circe is told to make her way up to the palace immediately. She narrates:

Before us, the huge limestone stairs wavered in the heat. Men streamed past us, servants and nobles alike, their shoulders sun-darkened and bare. Above, the palace of mighty Knossos glowed on its hill like a hive. We climbed. I heard Daedalus’ breaths behind me and Polydamas’ in front. The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet.

With that last image, the author culminates her depiction of this new context. She manages to do a lot with a sentence of modest size:

The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet.

Though she says little about the physical appearance of the staircase, she conjures a vivid image of it by stirring our imagination about the history and nature of the kingdom that it serves. It is a kingdom whose subjects have long toiled in relentless heat to shuttle riches up from the docks to the throne. It’s an evocative image delivered concisely.

But I have one problem with it – the execution. I think the phrasing needed more iteration. The last bit in particular – endless hurrying feet – is a somewhat clunky, disappointing resolution.

It was hard to pinpoint what bothered me about it. At first I thought it was the word endless. I figured I’d replace it with ceaseless. But by the time I’d found a phrasing I preferred, it didn’t matter much which of those two words were used.

One thing that bothers me is the mushy -ing form of hurry. Another is the awkward way endless and hurrying get in each other’s way modifying feet. My instinct is to break up this awkward trio and to pick a more pleasing form of hurry, like hurried or hurry itself, one that is more pleasing to say and hear.

Here’s a rephrasing that conserves Miller’s idea and that I think improves the sentence that contains it:

Years of endless hurry up and down the steps had worn them smooth.

This rephrasing has a few subtle effects. By adding up and down it gives suitable motion to the image, highlighting the endless hurry of the kingdom’s subjects. And by flipping the order of elements – history first, then present – it refocuses the sentence ultimately on the present, where the action is happening. But if there is a major improvement I think it is a rhythmic one. Reading the two versions one after the other shows how different they are in that respect:

The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet.

Years of endless hurry up and down the steps had worn them smooth.

The phrasing of were worn smooth and endless hurrying feet stunt the flow of the original sentence. And perhaps this was an intentional choice by Miller. In the end, it’s a matter of taste and aesthetic affinity. But I prefer the regular rhythmic flow of my sentence (which I believe is in Trochaic meter).

Using Scansion notation, where a stressed syllable is marked with / and an unstressed one with x:

 x    \    x    \     \     x    \     x  \  x   \  x  x   \
The steps were worn smooth from years of endless hurrying feet.

The rhythm of were worn smooth is ambiguous to me. Regardless, the sentence doesn’t flow with the same pattern throughout. On the other hand, this one does:

 \    x   \  x   \  x  \   x   \    x   \     x   \    x    \
Years of endless hurry up and down the steps had worn them smooth.