his ship.... It might grip him.

But was he forever doomed to this mournful weeping place, place of rain,
place of mists, gray boulders, and moaning winds? Must he abide in the
Valley of the Black Pig until the Boar without Bristles came lumbering
out of the red west, and went grunting, eating ravenously, eating prey
of souls, until he lay down in obscene sleep, and the stars one by one
guttered like candles, and the sun shot into a vast explosion, and the
moon was a handful of peat ashes, and the whole great universe snapped
like a gunshot and the debris of all created things fell downward like a
shattered wall, faster, faster, faster, to where, where, where?

Section 7

In the streets now the June snow fell, not the soft and flaky petals of
the North, but a bitter steel-like snow, that whirled. And the winds of
the pampas hurried like Furies through the sordid streets, and stopped
to snarl, as a dog snarls, and now moaned, and now howled sharply, as a
wolf howls. There was something cold, malignant, about it all ... Old
Irish writers said that hell was cold. _An Ait Fuar_, they called it,
the Cold Place. _Ait gan chu gan chat, gan leanbh, ait gan ghean, gan
ghaire_, a place without a dog, or cat, or child, a place without
affection or laughter.... Had sainted Brendan come on Buenos Aires in
winter on his voyage to Hy Brazil, and thought in his naivete that here
was hell ...? And was he wrong?

Cold of wolves! It must have been like this in ancient Paris when Villon
thieved and sang, and the wolves came clamoring at the gates ... and the
crusaders in warm Palestine.... Or in Russia--Siberia, a cold name....
Here it was hell, but in Europe ... oh, different there! The heavy
flakes, so solid, so wonderful, the laden trees, the great stretch of
white. And in the houses the farmers blessing the snow, that would keep
the ground warm and fertile for the coming year, that the blue flax
might arise, and the fields of corn, with the great pleasance of the
clover, and the golden-belted bees.... And the turf fires of Ulster, and
Christmas coming, and after that Candlemas, and then March of the
plowing, and glossy crows busy in the fields.... Always something to see
ahead.... Not in Ireland only, but England, the jingle of bells and the
people of ruddy faces.... And in Germany, too, the bluff important
burghers having their houses heated by quaint porcelain stoves, huddling
themselves in furs, and waddling obesely.... Very pl