Well, when you're up there and you're all alone, see, it's just you and your ship and the sky. And you don't want anybody up there... with you, you don't want anybody to spoil it. Everything's kind of still, and you have a feeling that you're halfway to heaven. You don't even seem to hear the sound of your own motor, just a kind of a buzz, like the sky was calling you. Like the sky was singin' you a song.... Yeah. And somehow it's never eight o'clock up there, it's always now. And the earth is so far below you that it just doesn't matter anymore, the sky is the thing that's important. The sky is your pal. You feel like nudging it and saying, "Hiya sky, how are you today? And how was the old moon the last time you saw him?" The wind drift comes straight off the morning star and beautiful white clouds drift towards you. And they're like old friends. Friends you never want to say goodbye to. And you see a patch of clear air in between 'em and you duck in and out, like a porpoise rollin' in the ocean. And then you say to yourself, "Boy, oh boy, this is the only time a man is really ever alive. It's the only time he's really ever free." The old sky smiles back at you and says, "Boy, you're right. You're dead right."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During those years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.... it was Shakespeare w...ho said, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." It was a state of mind with which I found myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn't matter to anyone any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing... Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles t...he preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. I...t 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If, as I can't help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), ...then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »