He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he would rob his bank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life rolled out evenly – an adventureless tale.
How beautiful must be a soul in the state of grace when God looked upon it with love!
She was a little vulgar; sometimes she said “I seen” and “If I had’ve known.” But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs march ing.
The year returns. History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with you once again. Life, love, voyage round your own little world.
Why was he kneeling there like a child saying his evening prayers? To be alone with his soul, to examine his conscience, to meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them.
The journey laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal.
God and morality and religion come first.
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
A gust of wind blows in through the porch with the sound of shaken leaves. The flame of the lamp leaps.
A side eye at my Hamlet hat.
No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.
To be a shoefitter in Mansfield’s was my love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies.
Said religion was not a lying-in hospital. Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mind and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less. Then she said I would come back to faith because I had a restless mind. This means to leave church by back door of sin and re-enter through the skylight of repentance. Cannot repent. Told her so and asked for sixpence. Got threepence.
He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.
In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man’s work.
Epi oinopa ponton.
Thalatta! Thalatta!
Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.
Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghost-woman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will.