Araby

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.

The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.

Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.

I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.

We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land.

These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre.

Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.