Page 125 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

—Is that you, pigeon?
—Number ten. Fresh Nelly is waiting on you.
—Good night, husband! Coming in to have a short
time?
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread
out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock’s; and,
when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated,
began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices ap-
pearing and disappearing were eyes opening and closing;
the eyes opening and closing were stars being born and be-
ing quenched. The vast cycle of starry life bore his weary
mind outward to its verge and inward to its centre, a dis-
tant music accompanying him outward and inward. What
music? The music came nearer and he recalled the words,
the words of Shelley’s fragment upon the moon wander-
ing companionless, pale for weariness. The stars began to
crumble and a cloud of fine stardust fell through space.
The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon
another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to spread
abroad its widening tail. It was his own soul going forth to
experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the
bale-fire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself,
fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires. They were
quenched: and the cold darkness filled chaos.
A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first
violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and
had feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the ex-
cess. Instead the vital wave had carried him on its bosom
out of himself and back again when it receded: and no part

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