I hardly hear the purlieu cry Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by Before my thoughts begin to run On F. M’Curdy Atkinson, The same that had the wooden leg And that filibustering filibeg That never dared to slake his drouth, Magee that had the chinless mouth. Being afraid to marry on earth They masturbated for all they were worth.
Jest on. Know thyself.
Halted below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
―Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
A laugh tripped over his lips.
―Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats’ touch?
He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
―The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer.
He stopped at the stairfoot.
―I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s morrice with caps of indices.
In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet: