—­Ah, there must be terrible queer creatures at the latter end of the world.

I fear him.  I fear his red-rimmed horny eyes.  It is with him I must struggle all through this night till day come, till he or I lie dead, gripping him by the sinewy throat till...  Till what?  Till he yield to me?  No.  I mean no harm.

April 15.  Met her today point blank in Grafton Street.  The crowd brought us together.  We both stopped.  She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me.  This was only to gain time.  Asked me was I writing poems?  About whom?  I asked her.  This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean.  Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri.  Talked rapidly of myself and my plans.  In the midst of it unluckily I made a sudden gesture of a revolutionary nature.  I must have looked like a fellow throwing a handful of peas into the air.  People began to look at us.  She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped I would do what I said.

Now I call that friendly, don’t you?

Yes, I liked her today.  A little or much?  Don’t know.  I liked her and it seems a new feeling to me.  Then, in that case, all the rest, all that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest before now, in fact...  O, give it up, old chap!  Sleep it off!

April 16.  Away!  Away!

The spell of arms and voices:  the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations.  They are held out to say:  We are alone—­come.  And the voices say with them:  We are your kinsmen.  And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.

April 26.  Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order.  She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels.  Amen.  So be it.  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.

April 27.  Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Dublin, 1904
Trieste, 1914