Everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence of it; but I do not know that anything else gave us so vivid a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those
footworn grooves in the paving-stones.
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in.
There is a feeling of weariness created by the slow, march-like prelude, as well as the use of words such as "
footworn" and "dead feet." The singer should treat the recitative-like opening section in a staid manner with hushed dynamics.
He'd been pondering how to evict her from the private preserve of his memory as he ambled along the shortcut, a pinche little
footworn track that meandered and curled, branching off here and branching off there.