Page 214 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

cession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and
fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave
of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every
flush deeper than the other.
Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid
grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, re-
calling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.
He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about
him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the
pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in
grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with
a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in
distant pools.
Chapter 5
He drained his third cup of watery tea to the dregs and
set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered
near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow
dripping had been scooped out like a boghole and the pool
under it brought back to his memory the dark turf-coloured
water of the bath in Clongowes. The box of pawn tickets at
his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one af-
ter another in his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets,
scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of
the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.
1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man’s Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid

214 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man