mself bitterly as he walked through the
streets that she was a figure of the womanhood of her country, a bat-like
soul waking to the consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy and
loneliness, tarrying awhile, loveless and sinless, with her mild lover and
leaving him to whisper of innocent transgressions in the latticed ear of a
priest. His anger against her found vent in coarse railing at her
paramour, whose name and voice and features offended his baffled pride: a
priested peasant, with a brother a policeman in Dublin and a brother a
potboy in Moycullen. To him she would unveil her soul's shy nakedness, to
one who was but schooled in the discharging of a formal rite rather than
to him, a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread
of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.

The radiant image of the eucharist united again in an instant his
bitter and despairing thoughts, their cries arising unbroken in a hymn
of thanksgiving.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

He spoke the verses aloud from the first lines till the music and
rhythm suffused his mind, turning it to quiet indulgence; then copied
them painfully to feel them the better by seeing them; then lay back on
his bolster.

The full morning light had come. No sound was to be heard; but he knew
that all around him life was about to awaken in common noises, hoarse
voices, sleepy prayers. Shrinking from that life he turned towards the
wall, making a cowl of the blanket and staring at the great overblown
scarlet flowers of the tattered wallpaper. He tried to warm his
perishing joy in their scarlet glow, imagining a roseway from where he
lay upwards to heaven all strewn with scarlet flowers. Weary! Weary! He
too was weary of ardent ways.

A gradual warmth, a languorous weariness passed over him descending
along his spine from his closely cowled head. He felt it descend and,
seeing himself as he lay, smiled. Soon he would sleep.

He had written verses for her again after ten years. Ten years before
she had worn her shawl cowlwise about her head, sending sprays of her
warm breath into the night air, tapping her foot upon the glassy road.
It was the last tram; the lank brown horses knew it and shook their
bells to the clear night in admonition.