The air of the room chilled his shoulders.
He stretched himself cautiously along under
the sheets and lay down beside his wife.
One by one they were all becoming shades.
Better pass boldly into that other world,
in the full glory of some passion, than fade
and wither dismally with age. He thought
of how she who lay beside him had locked
in her heart for so many years that image of
her lover’s eyes when he had told her
that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that
himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must
be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the
partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man
standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near.
His soul had approached that region where dwell the
vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could
not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence.
His own identity was fading out into a grey
impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead
had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window.
It had begun to snow again.
He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
falling obliquely against the lamplight.
The time had come for him to set out
on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers
were right: snow was general all over Ireland.
It was falling on every part of the dark central plain,
on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen
and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark
mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every
part of the lonely churchyard on the hill
where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly
drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones,
on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling
faintly through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end, upon all the living
and the dead.
He stretched himself cautiously along under
the sheets and lay down beside his wife.
One by one they were all becoming shades.
Better pass boldly into that other world,
in the full glory of some passion, than fade
and wither dismally with age. He thought
of how she who lay beside him had locked
in her heart for so many years that image of
her lover’s eyes when he had told her
that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that
himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must
be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the
partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man
standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near.
His soul had approached that region where dwell the
vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could
not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence.
His own identity was fading out into a grey
impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead
had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window.
It had begun to snow again.
He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
falling obliquely against the lamplight.
The time had come for him to set out
on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers
were right: snow was general all over Ireland.
It was falling on every part of the dark central plain,
on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen
and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark
mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every
part of the lonely churchyard on the hill
where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly
drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones,
on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling
faintly through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end, upon all the living
and the dead.
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