Ch5 Pt3

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter five, Part three of a Portrait of the Artist
as a young man. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Peter Bobby. A Portrait of the Artist as a young

(00:22):
Man by James Joyce, Chapter five, Part three. Towards dawn,
he awoke, Oh, what sweet music. His soul was all dewy,
wet over his limbs in sleep. Pale cool waves of
light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul

(00:43):
lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint, sweet music. His
mind was waking slowly to a tremulous mourning knowledge, a
morning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water,
sweet as dew, moving as music. But how faintly it was.

(01:03):
In breathed, how passionlessly, as if the Seraphim themselves were
breathing upon him. His soul was waking, slowly, fearing to
wake wholly. It was that windless hour of dawn, when
madness wakes, and strange plants open to the light, and
the moth flies forth silently, an enchantment of the heart.

(01:27):
The night had been enchanted in a dream or vision
he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life? Was it
an instant of enchantment? Only were long hours and days
and years and ages. The instant of inspiration seemed now
to be reflected from all sides at once, from a

(01:47):
multitude of cloudy circumstance. Of what had happened, were of
what might have happened? The instant flashed forth like a
point of light, And now from cloud on cloud, a
vague circumstance, confused form was veiling softly its afterglow. Oh,
in the virgin womb of the imagination, the word was

(02:08):
made flesh. Gabriel the seraph had come to the virgin's
chamber an afterglow deepened within his spirit. Whence the white
flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light.
That rose and ardent light was her strange, wilful heart,
strange that no man had known or would know, wilful

(02:30):
from before the beginning of the world. And lured by
that ardent, rose like glow, the choirs of the Seraphim
were falling from heaven. Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Lure of the fallen Seraphim? Till no more of enchanted days.
The verses passed from his mind to his lips, and

(02:52):
murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a
villainell pass through them. The rose like glow sent forth
its rays of rhyme ways, days, blaze, praise rays. Its
rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men
and angels, the rays from the rose that was her

(03:12):
wilful heart. Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze, and
you have had your will of him? Are you not
weary of ardent ways? And then the rhythm died away, ceased,
began again to move and beat, and then smoke incense
ascending from the altar of the world. Above the flame,

(03:37):
The smoke of praise goes up from ocean rim to rim,
tell no more of enchanted days. Smoke went up from
the whole earth, from the vapory oceans, smoke of her praise.
The earth was like a swinging, smoking, swaying censer, a
ball of incense, an illipsoidal ball. The rhythm died out

(03:59):
at once, the cry of his heart was broken. His
lips began to murmur the first verses over and over,
then went on stumbling through half verses, stammering and baffled,
then stopped. The heart's cry was broken. The veiled, windless
hour had passed, and behind the panes of the naked

(04:19):
window the morning light was gathering. A bell beat faintly,
very far away. A bird twittered, two birds three, the
bell and the bird ceased, and the dull white light
spread itself east and west, covering the world, covering the
rose light in his heart. Fearing to lose all, he

(04:42):
raised himself suddenly on his elbow to look for paper
and pencil. There was neither on the table, only the
soup plate he had eaten the rice from for supper,
and the candlestick, with its tendrils of tallow and its
paper socket singed by the last flame. He stretched his
arm wearily towards the foot of the bed, groping with
his hand in the pockets of the coat that hung there.

(05:05):
His fingers found a pencil, and then a cigarette packet.
He lay back, and, tearing open the packet, placed the
last cigarette on the window ledge, and began to write
out the stanzas of the Villainel in small, neat letters
on the rough cardboard surface. Having written them out he
lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring them again. The

(05:27):
lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of
the lumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlor,
on which he used to sit, smiling or serious, asking
himself why he had come displeased with her, and with
himself confounded by the print of the sacred Heart above
the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a

(05:49):
lull of the talk, and beg him to sing one
of his curious songs. Then he saw himself sitting at
the old piano, striking chords softly from its speckled keys,
and singing amid the talk which had risen again in
the room, to her, who leaned beside the mantelpiece, A
dainty song of the Elizabethans, a sad and sweet loth

(06:10):
to depart, the victory chant of Agincourt, the happy air
of green sleeves. While he sang and she listened, or
faigned to listen, his heart was at rest. But when
the quaint old songs had ended and he heard again
the voices in the room, he remembered his own sarcasm.
The house where young men are called by their Christian

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names a little too soon at certain instances. Her eyes
seemed about to trust him, but he had waited in vain.
She passed now, dancing lightly across his memory, as she
had been that night at the carnival ball, her white
dress a little lifted, a white spray nodding in her hair.

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She danced lightly in the round. She was dancing towards him,
and as she came her eyes were a little of averted,
and a faint glow was on her cheek. At the
paws in the chain of hands, her hand had lain
in his an instant, a soft merchandise. You are a
great stranger. Now, yes, I was born to be a monk.

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I am afraid you are a heretic? Are you much afraid?
For answer? She had danced away from him along the
chain of hands, dancing lightly and discreetly, giving herself to none.
The white spray nodded to her dancing, and when she
was in shadow, the glow was deeper on her cheek.
A monk his own image started forth, a profaner of

(07:38):
the cloister, a heretic Franciscan, willing and willing not to serve,
spinning like Giardino da Borgo Sandonino, a lithe web of sophistry,
and whispering in her ear. No, it was not his image.
It was like the image of the young priest in
whose company he had seen her last, looking at him

(07:58):
out of dove's eyes, toying with the pages of her
Irish phrase book. Yes, Yes, the ladies are coming round
to us. I can see it every day. The ladies
are with us, the best helpers the language has, and
the church, Father Moran, the church too coming round too.
The work is going ahead there too. Don't fret about

(08:19):
the church. Bah. He had done well to leave the
room in disdain. He had done well not to salute
her on the steps of the library. He had done
well to leave her to flirt with her priest, to
toy with a church which was the scullery maid of Christendom.
Rude brutal Anger routed the last lingering instant of ecstasy

(08:39):
from his soul. It broke up violently her fair image
and flung the fragments on all sides, on all sides,
distorted reflections of her image started from his memory, the
flower girl in the ragged dress with damp, coarse hair
on a Hoyden's face, who had called herself his own
girl and begged his handsel. The kitchen girl in the

(08:59):
next house, who sang over the clatter of her plates
with the drawl of a country singer, the first bars
of by Killarney's Lakes and Fells. A girl who had
laughed gaily to see him stumble when the iron grating
in the footpath near Corkhill had caught the broken sole
of his shoe. A girl he had glanced at, attracted
by her small, ripe mouth as she passed out of

(09:21):
Jacob's biscuit factory, who had cried to him over her shoulder,
do you like what you've seen of me? Straight hair
and curly eyebrows. And yet he felt that, however he
might revile and mock her image, his anger was also
a form of homage. He had left the class room
in disdain that was not wholly sincere, feeling that perhaps

(09:42):
the secret of her race lay behind those dark eyes
upon which her long lashes flung a quick shadow. He
had told himself 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

(10:04):
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 priest did peasant with a brother, a
policeman in Dublin, and a brother a pot boy in Moycullen.

(10:26):
To him. She would unveil her soul's shy nakedness to
one who was but schooled in the discharging of a
formal right, rather than to him. A priest of eternal imagination,
transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body
of ever living life, the radiant image of the Eucharist,

(10:47):
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? Whilst sacrificing hands upraised,
the chalice flowing to the brim, tell no more of

(11:09):
enchanted days. He spoke the verses aloud from the first
lines till the music and rhythms 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

(11:31):
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

(11:51):
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.

(12:16):
Soon he would sleep. He had written verses for her again,
after ten years ten years before, she had worn her
shawl cowl wise 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

(12:37):
clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with the driver,
both nodding, often in the green light of the lamp.
They stood on the steps of the tram, he on
the upper, she on the lower. She came up to
his step many times between their phrases, and went down again,
and once or twice remained beside him forgetting to go down,

(12:57):
and then went down. Let be let be ten years
from that wisdom of children to his folly. If he
sent her the verses, they would be read out at
breakfast amid the tapping of egg shells. Folly. Indeed, the
brothers would laugh and try to wrest the page from
each other with their strong, hard fingers. The suave priest,

(13:19):
her uncle, seated in his arm chair, would hold the
page at arm's length, read it, smiling, and approve of
the literary form. No, No, that was folly. Even if
he sent her the verses, she would not show them
to others. No, No, she could not. He began to
feel that he had wronged her. A sense of her
innocence moved him almost to pity her, an innocence he

(13:42):
had never understood till he had come to the knowledge
of it through sin, an innocence which she too had
not understood while she was innocent, or before the strange
humiliation of her nature had first come upon her. Then
first her soul had begun to live, as his soul
had when he had first sinned. And a tender compassion
filled his heart as he remembered her frail pallor, and

(14:05):
her eyes humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood,
while his soul had passed from ecstasy to languor, where
had she been? Might it be, in the mysterious ways
of spiritual life that her soul, at those same moments
had been conscious of his homage? It might be a

(14:25):
glow of desire kindled again his soul and fired and
fulfilled all his body. Conscious of his desire, she was
waking from odorous sleep, the temptress of his villainelle. Her
eyes dark and with a look of languor, were opening
to his eyes. Her nakedness yielded to him radiant, warm, odorous,

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and lavish limbed enfolded him like a shining cloud, enfolded
him like water with a liquid life, and like a
cloud of vapor. Were like waters circumfluent in space. The
liquid letters of speech bymbs of the element of mystery
flowed forth over his brain. Are you not weary of
ardent ways? Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more

(15:10):
of enchanted days? Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze,
and you have had your will of him? Are you
not weary of ardent ways? Above the flame, the smoke
of praise goes up from ocean rim to rim. Tell
no more of enchanted days? Our broken cries and mournful

(15:30):
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? And
still you hold our longing gaze with languorous look and
lavish limb. Are you not weary of ardent ways? Tell

(15:53):
no more of enchanted days? What birds were they? He
stood on the step of the library to look at them,
leaning wearily on his ashplant, they flew round and round
the jutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The
air of the late March evening made clear their flight,
their dark, darting, quivering bodies, flying clearly against the sky

(16:16):
as against a limp hung cloth of smoky, tenuous blue.
He watched their flight, bird after bird, a dark flash,
a swerve, a flash again, a dart aside, a curve,
a flutter of wings. He tried to count them before
all their darting quivering bodies passed six, ten eleven, and

(16:37):
wondered were they odd or even? In number twelve thirteen
for two came wheeling down from the upper sky. They
were flying high and low, but ever round and round
in straight and curving lines, and ever flying from left
to right, circling about a temple of air. He listened
to the cries, like the squeak of mice behind the wainscoat,

(16:57):
a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and
shrill and whirring, unlike the cry of vermin falling a
third or a fourth and thrilled as the flying beaks
clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear, and
fine and falling like threads of silken light unwound from
whirring spools. The inhuman clamor soothed his ears, in which

(17:19):
his mother's sobs and reproaches murmured insistently. And the dark, frail,
quivering bodies, wheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy
temple of the tenuous sky soothed his eyes, which still
saw the image of his mother's face. Why was he
gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing their
shrill twofold cry, watching their flight for an augury of

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good or evil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through
his mind, and then there flew hither and thither shapeless
thoughts from Swedenborg on the correspondence of birds to things
of the intellect, and of how the creatures of the
air have their knowledge and know their times and seasons,
because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life,
and have not perverted that order by reason and for

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ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at
birds in flight, The colonnade above him made him think
vaguely of an ancient temple and the ashplant on which
he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an auger.
A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the
heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents
of the hawk like man whose name he bore, soaring

(18:27):
out of his captivity on ozure woven wings of Thoth,
the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet,
and bearing on his narrow IBI's head the cusped moon.
He smiled as he thought of the god's image, for
it made him think of a bottle nosed judge in
a wig, putting commas into a document which he held

(18:47):
at arm's length. And he knew that he would not
have remembered the god's name, but that it was like
an Irish oath. It was folly. But was it for
this folly that he was about to leave forever the
house of prayer and prudence into which he had been born,
and the order of life out of which he had come.
They came back with shrill cries over the jutting shoulder

(19:09):
of the house, flying darkly against the fading air. What
birds were they? He thought that they must be swallows
who had come back from the south. Then he was
to go away, For they were birds, ever going and coming,
building ever an unlasting home under the eaves of men's houses,
and ever leaving the homes they had built to wander.

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Bend down your faces, Una and Alile, I gaze upon them,
as the swallow gazes upon the nest under the eve.
Before he wander the loud waters, A soft liquid joy,
like the noise of many waters, flowed over his memory,
and he felt in his heart the soft peace of
silent spaces, of fading, tenuous sky above the waters, of

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oceanic silence, of swallows flying through the sea dusk, over
the flowing waters. A soft liquid joy flowed through the words,
where the soft, long vowels hurtled noiselessly and fell away,
lapping and flowing back and ever shaking, the white bells
of their waves in mute chime and mute peel and soft,
low swooning cry. And he felt that the augury he

(20:15):
had sought in the wheeling, darting birds, and in the
pale space of sky above him, had come forth from
his heart like a bird from a turret, quietly and swiftly,
symbol of departure or of loneliness. The verses crooned in
the ear of his memory, composed slowly before his remembering
eyes the scene of the hall on the night of
the opening of the National Theater. He was alone at

(20:38):
the side of the balcony, looking out of jaded eyes
at the culture of Dublin in the stalls, and at
the tawdry scene cloths and human dolls framed by the
garish lamps of the stage. A burly policeman sweated behind
him and seemed at every moment about to act. The
catcalls and hisses and mocking cries ran in rude gusts

(20:58):
round the hall from his scattered fellow students. A libel
on Ireland made in Germany, blasphemy. We never sold our faith,
no irishwoman ever did it. We want no amateur atheists,
We nought no budding Buddhists. A sudden, swift hiss fell
from the windows above him, and he knew that the
electric lamps had been switched on in the reader's room.

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He turned into the pillared hall, now calmly lit, went
up the staircase and passed in through the clicking turnstile.
Cranley was sitting over near the dictionaries, A thick book
opened at the frontispiece lay before him on the wooden rest.
He leaned back in his chair, inclining his ear like
that of a confessor, to the face of the medical student,

(21:42):
who was reading to him a problem from the chest
page of a journal. Stephen sat down at his right,
and the priest at the other side of the table
closed his copy of the tablet with an angry snap
and stood up. Cranleigh gazed after him, blandly and vaguely.
The medical student went on, in a softer voice, pawn
to King's fourth We had better go, Dixon, said Stephen,

(22:05):
in mourning. He has gone to complain. Dixon folded the
journal and rose with dignity, saying, our men retired in
good order, with guns and cattle, added Stephen, pointing to
the title page of Cranley's book, on which was printed
Diseases of the ox. As they passed through a lane

(22:25):
of the tables, Stephen said, Cranley, I want to speak
to you. Cranley did not answer or turn. He laid
his book on the counter and passed out, his well
shod feet, sounding flatly on the floor on the staircase.
He paused and gazing absently at Dixon, repeated, pawn to
King's bloody fourth. Put it that way if you like,

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Dixon said. He had a quiet, toneless voice and urbane manners,
and on a finger of his plump, clean hand he
displayed at moments a signet ring. As they crossed the hall,
a man of dwarfish Thatture, came towards them under the
dome of his tiny hat. His unshaven face began to
smile with pleasure, and he was heard to murmur. The

(23:07):
eyes were melancholy as those of a monkey. Good evening, Captain,
said Cranly, halting good evening, gentlemen, said the stubble grown
monkeyish face or weather from March, said Cranly, They have
the windows open up stairs. Dixon smiled and turned his ring.
The blackish monkey, puckered face pursed its human mouth with

(23:27):
gentle pleasure, and its voice purred delightful weather for March,
simply delightful. There are two nice young ladies upstairs. Captain
tired of waiting, Dixon said. Cranley smiled and said kindly,
the captain has only one love, Sir Walter Scott. Isn't
that so, Captain? What are you reading now? Captain? Dixon

(23:48):
asked the bride of lammermore ny love. Old Scott, the
flexible lips said, I think he writes something lovely. There
is no rider can touch Sir Walter Scott. He moved
a thin, shrunken brown hand gently in the air in
time to his praise, and his thin quick eyelids beat
often over his sad eyes. Sadder to Stephen's ear. Was

(24:11):
his speech a genteel accent, low and moist, marred by errors,
And listening to it, he wondered was the story true?
And was the thin blood that flowed in his shrunken
frame noble and come of an incestuous love. The park
trees were heavy with rain, and rain fell still and
ever in the lake, lying gray like a shield. A

(24:34):
game of swans flew there, and the water and the
shore beneath were fouled with their green white slime. They
embraced softly, impelled by the gray, rainy light, the wet,
silent trees, the shield like witnessing lake. The swans they embraced,
without joy or passion. His arm about his sister's neck,

(24:56):
a gray woolen cloak was wrapped athwart from her shoulder
to her waist, and her fair head was bent in
willing shame. He had loose, red brown hair and tender, shapely, strong,
freckled hands. Face there was no face seen. The brother's
face was bent upon her fair rain, fragrant hair. The hand,

(25:17):
freckled and strong and shapely and caressing, was Davin's hand.
He frowned angrily upon his thought, and on the shriveled Mannikin,
who had called it forth. His father's gibes at the
bantry gang leaped out of his memory. He held them
at a distance and brooded uneasily on his own thought again,
Why were they not Cranley's hands? Had Davin's simplicity and

(25:40):
innocence stung him? More secretly? He walked on across the
hall with Dixon, leaving Cranley to take leave elaborately of
the dwarf. Under the colonnade. Temple was standing in the
midst of a little group of students. One of them cried, Dixon,
come over till ye hear Temple is in grand form.
Temple turned on him his dark, gipsy eyes. You're a hypocrite, O'Keefe,

(26:04):
he said, And Dixon's a smiler, by hell. I think
that's a good literary expression. He laughed slyly, looking in
Stephen's face, repeating, by hell, I'm delighted with that name.
A smiler, a stout student who stood below them on
the steps said, come back to the mistress, Temple. We
want to hear about that he had faith, Temple said,

(26:25):
and he was a married man too, And all the
priests used to be dining there by. Hell, I think
they all had a touch. We shall call it riding
a hack to spare the hunter, said Dixon. Tell us Temple,
O'Keefe said, how many quarts of porter have you in you?
All your intellectual soul is in that phrase, O'Keefe, said
Temple with open scorn. He moved with a shambling gait

(26:47):
round the group and spoke to Stephen. Did you know
that the foresters are the kings of Belgium? He asked.
Cranlely came out through the door of the entrance hall,
his hat thrust back on the nape of his neck
and picking his tea with care. And here's the Wiseacre,
said Temple. Do you know that about the fosters? He
paused for an answer. Cranley dislodged a fig seed from

(27:10):
his teeth. On the point of his rude toothpick and
gazed at it intently. The Forster family, Temple said, is
descended from Baldwin, the first king of Flanders. He was
called the Forester. Forester and Forster are the same name.
A descendant of Baldwin. The first Captain Francis Forster settled
in Ireland and married the daughter of the last chieftain
of Clan Brussel. Then there are the Blake Foresters. That's

(27:34):
a different branch from bald Head, King of Flanders. Cranley repeated,
rooting again deliberately at his gleaming uncovered teeth. Where did
you pick up all that history, o'keith asked, I know
all the history of your family too, Temple said, turning
to Stephen, do you know what Geraldus Cambrensis says about
your family? Is he descended from Baldwin, too? Asked a tall,

(27:57):
consumptive student with dark eyes bald Cranly repeated, sucking at
a crevice in his teeth. Per noobleis et peratusta familia,
Temple said to Stephen. The stout student who stood below
them on the steps, farted briefly. Dixon turned towards him,
saying in a soft voice, did an angel speak? Cranley

(28:18):
turned also and said, vehemently, but without anger, Goggins, you're
the flamingest dirty devil I ever met. You know, I
had it on my mind to say that. Goggins answered firmly.
It did no one any harm, did it? We? Hope?
Dixon said suavely that it was not of the kind
known to science as Paolo post futurum. Didn't I tell

(28:38):
you he was a smiler, said Temple, turning right and left.
Didn't I give him that name? You did? We're not deaf,
said the tall consumptive. Cranley still frowned at the stout
student below him, then, with a snort of disgust, he
shoved him violently down the steps. Go away from here,
he said, rudely, go away, you stinkpot, and you are
a stink pot. Skipped down on to the gravel, and

(29:01):
at once returned to his place with good humor. Temple
turned back to Stephen and asked, do you believe in
the law of heredity? Are you drunk? Or what are
you or what are you trying to say? Asked Cranley,
facing round on him, with an expression of wonder. The
most profound sentence ever written, Temple said, with enthusiasm is
the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is

(29:25):
the beginning of death. He touched Stephen timidly at the
elbow and said, eagerly, do you feel how profound that is?
Because you are a poet. Cranley pointed his long forefinger.
Look at him, he said, with scorn to the others,
look at Ireland's hope. They laughed at his words and gesture.
Temple turned on him bravely, saying, Cranley, you are always

(29:48):
sneering at me. I can see that. But I am
as good as you any day. Do you know what
I think about you now as compared with myself, my
dear man, said Cranlely, or mainly you are incapable, you know,
absolutely incapable of thinking. But you know, Temple went on,
what I think of you and of myself compared together?

(30:09):
Out with it, Temple, the stout student cried from the steps,
Get it out in bits. Temple turned right and left,
making sudden feeble gestures as he spoke. I'm a balox,
he said, shaking his head in despair. I am, and
I know I am and I admit it that I am.
Dixon patted him lightly on the shoulder and said mildly,

(30:30):
and it does you every credit, Temple. But he Temple said,
pointing to Cranley, he is a balox too, like me,
only he doesn't know it. And that's the only difference
I see. A burst of laughter covered his words, But
he turned again to Stephen and said, with a sudden eagerness,
that word is a most interesting word. That's the only
English duel number. Did you know is it? Said Stephen vaguely.

(30:56):
He was watching Cranleigh's firm, featured, suffering face lit up
now by a smile of false patience. The gross name
had passed over it like foul water poured over an
old stone image patient of injuries. And as he watched him,
he saw him raise his hat in salute and uncover
the black hair that stood up stiffly from his forehead

(31:17):
like an iron crown. She passed out from the porch
of the library and bowed across Stephen in reply to
Cranley's greeting. He also, was there not a slight flush
on Cranley's cheek, or had it come forth? At Temple's words?
The light had waned he could not see. Did that
explain his friend's listless silence, his harsh comments, the sudden

(31:39):
intrusions of rude speech with which he had shattered so
often Stephen's ardent, wayward confessions. Stephen had forgiven freely, for
he had found this rudeness also in himself, towards himself.
And he remembered an evening when he had dismounted from
a borrowed creaking bicycle to pray to God in a
wood near Malahyde. He had lifted up his arms and
spoken in ecstasy to the somber nave of trees, knowing

(32:03):
that he stood on holy ground and in a holy hour.
And when two constabulary men had come into sight round
a bend in the gloomy road, he had broken off
his prayer to whistle loudly an air from the last pantomime.
He began to beat the frayed end of his ashplant
against the base of a pillar. Had Cranley not heard
him yet? He could wait. The talk about him ceased

(32:25):
for a moment, and a soft hiss fell again from
a window above, But no other sound was in the air,
and the swallows whose flight he had followed with idle
eyes were sleeping. She had passed through the dusk, and
therefore the air was silent, save for one soft hiss
that fell, and therefore the tongues about him had ceased

(32:46):
their babble. Darkness was falling, Darkness falls from the air.
A trembling joy lambent as a faint light played like
a fairy host around him. But why her passage through
the darkening air? Or the verse with its black vowels
and its opening sound rich and lute like. He walked away,

(33:08):
slowly towards the deeper shadows at the end of the colonnade,
beating the stone softly with his stick to hide his
reverie from the students whom he had left, and allowed
his mind to summon back to itself the age of
Dowland and bird and nash, eyes opening from the darkness
of desire, eyes that dimmed the breaking east. What was

(33:30):
their languid grace but the softness of chambering, And what
was there shimmer but the shimmer of the scum that
mantled the cesspool of the court of a slobbering Stuart.
And he tasted in the language of memory, ambered wines
dying fallings of sweet airs, the proud pavan, and saw
with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in covent garden

(33:54):
wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths, and the pox
fowled wenches of the taverns, and young wives that, gaily,
yielding to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again. The images
he had summoned gave him no pleasure. They were secret
and inflaming, but her image was not entangled by them.
That was not the way to think of her. It

(34:16):
was not even the way in which he thought of her.
Could his mind then not trust itself old phrases sweet
only with a disinterred sweetness, like the fig seeds crandly
rooted out of his gleaming teeth. It was not thought
nor vision. Though he knew vaguely that her figure was
passing homeward through the city. Vaguely first and then more sharply,

(34:36):
he smelt her body, a conscious unrest seethed in his blood. Yes,
it was her body. He smelt, a wild and languid smell,
the tipid limbs over which his music had flowed desirously,
and the secret soft linen upon which her flesh distilled
odor and adieu. A lause crawled over the nape of

(34:57):
his neck, and, putting his thumb and fore finger deftly
beneath his loose collar, he caught it. He rolled its body,
tender yet brittle as a grain of rice, between thumb
and finger, for an instant before he let it fall
from him, and wondered would it live or die? There
came to his mind a curious phrase from Cornelius a Lapide,

(35:18):
which said that the lice born of human sweat were
not created by God with the other animals on the
sixth day. But the tickling of the skin of his
neck made his mind raw and red. The life of
his body, ill clad, ill fed, louse eaten, made him
close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair. And

(35:38):
in the darkness he saw the brittle, bright bodies of
lice falling from the air, and turning often as they fell. Yes,
and it was not darkness that fell from the air.
It was brightness. Brightness falls from the air. He had
not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it
had awakened were false, His bred vermin, his thoughts were

(36:02):
lice born of the sweat of sloth. He came back
quickly along the colonnade towards the group of students. Well, then,
let her go, and be damned to her. She could
love some clean athlete who washed himself every morning to
the waist and had black hair on his chest. Let her.
End of Chapter five, Part three,