I dreamt that I dwelt in
marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those
walls
That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches too great
to count; could boast
Of a high ancestral name,
But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same.
But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when
she had ended her song Joe was very much moved.
He said that there was no time like the long ago and
no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other
people might say; and his eyes filled up so much with
tears that he could not find what he was looking for
and in the end he had to ask his wife to tell him
where the corkscrew was.
Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod
because he wished to live as far as possible from
the city of which he was a citizen and because he
found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern
and pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house
and from his windows he could look into the disused
distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which
Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted
room were free from pictures. He had himself bought
every article of furniture in the room: a black
iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs,
a clothes- rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons
and a square table on which lay a double desk.
A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of
shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with
white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered
the foot. A little hand-mirror hung above the
washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood
as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books
on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below
upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth
stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of
the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover
of a notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf.
Writing materials were always on the desk. In
the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann’s
Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which were
written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers
held together by a brass pin. In these sheets
a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in
an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement
for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet.
On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped—the
fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of
gum or of an overripe apple which might have been
left there and forgotten.
