JohnConmeeSJ
Having read my little hours, I walk through the hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.
| JohnConmeeSJ I hear the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. I am their rector: my reign is mild. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ Reading my office, I watch a flock of muttoning clouds over Rathcoffey. My thinsocked ankles are tickled by the stubble of Congowes field. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ I bless both gravely and turn a thin page of my breviary. Sin: -- Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The young man raises his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bends and with slow care detaches from her light skirt a clinging twig. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ A flushed young man comes from a gap of a hedge and after him comes a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The sky shows me a flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A just and homely word. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The lychgate of a field shows me breadths of cabbages, curtseying to me with ample underleaves. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, are impalmed by me. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ I walk and move in times of yore. I am humane and honoured there. I bear in mind secrets confessed and smile at smiling noble faces. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully with her husband's brother. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ Those were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony. Mary, first countess of Belvedere. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The Malahide road is quiet. It pleases me, road and name. The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Then came the call to arms |
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| JohnConmeeSJ At the Howth road stop I alight, am saluted by the conductor and salute in my turn. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ She raises her small gloved fist, yawns ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiles tinily, sweetly. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The gentleman with the glasses opposite me has finished explaining and is looking down. His wife, I suppose. A tiny yawn opens her mouth. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ The solemnity of the occupants of the car seems excessive for a journey so short and cheap. I like cheerful decorum. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ Four shillings, a sixpence and five pennies chute from my other plump glovepalm into my purse. |
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| JohnConmeeSJ I sit in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with care in the eye of one plump kid glove. |
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