For my money, the most beautiful paragraph ever written in English. Even without context, it's gorgeous. In context, it's absolutely devastating.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Read the whole story here. Thank me later.
1 comment:
Yeah it is a great paragraph. Anne Pigone's takeoff of "The Dead" called "The Ugly" is perhaps even more devastating in context considering the tilt of her gender-switched satire.
The Ugly
She sat on the bed, plucking at a lone strand of hair on her thigh – an escapee from her last wax job. Garett stared at the ceiling. Tears now rounded his cheeks falling to his pillow. My poor darling, we are all circumstance – by birth, by fate. Of course it's not fair. Power's not fair. Wealth is not fair. Beauty? No way José. Only death is fair. Death trumps all and beauty, yes. But whats' the big deal, Garett? We're only snowflakes, butterflies with our little ephemeral moments of glory – our circumstantial, ephemeral moments. And then ...
She laid herself flat-out on the bed so close to her husband that she could feel his warmth but not touching, and closed her eyes. Slumberous flakes of snow, silver and dark, fell over her body, Garett's body, and all the sleeping and sleepless bodies of the Hotel Boulderado. It truly was snowing everywhere. Snowflakes from stars and moons everywhere falling like comets or dust or nothing. Falling on us all. Falling upon the beautiful and the ugly, the real and the counterfeit, the living and the dead.
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