Alone, what did Bloom feel? The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Réaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place.

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty and, when his arms wrap her round, he presses in his arms the loveliness which has long faded from the world. Not this. Not at all. I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself: A day of dappled seaborne clouds.

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.