Page 117 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

stirred in him as it had stirred in them. He had known nei-
ther the pleasure of companionship with others nor the
vigour of rude male health nor filial piety. Nothing stirred
within his soul but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His
childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of
simple joys and he was drifting amid life like the barren
shell of the moon.
Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gaz-
ing on the earth, Wandering companionless... ?
He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley’s fragment.
Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast in-
human cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his own
human and ineffectual grieving.
*****
Stephen’s mother and his brother and one of his cous-
ins waited at the corner of quiet Foster Place while he and
his father went up the steps and along the colonnade where
the Highland sentry was parading. When they had passed
into the great hall and stood at the counter Stephen drew
forth his orders on the governor of the bank of Ireland for
thirty and three pounds; and these sums, the moneys of his
exhibition and essay prize, were paid over to him rapidly
by the teller in notes and in coin respectively. He bestowed
them in his pockets with feigned composure and suffered
the friendly teller, to whom his father chatted, to take his
hand across the broad counter and wish him a brilliant ca-
reer in after life. He was impatient of their voices and could
not keep his feet at rest. But the teller still deferred the serv-
ing of others to say he was living in changed times and that

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