He thought to himself with a little smile that out of the wisdom of his life had always come sorrow, and out of his foolishness had come joy.... Granya, and peace, and meaning to his life.... A very foolish thing it had been, that expedition.... But he wouldn't have it laughed at, nor laugh at it himself.... Over the mists of the past the thing took glamour.... He had been more moved than he had allowed himself to believe then. And here in his New York drawing-room, remembering the old heroic-comic gesture, and remembering tragedies of material that were glorification of spirit, he thought for an instant he had solved the mystery of Ireland, ... Ireland was a drug.... Out of the gray sweeping stones, and the bogs of red moss and purple water, and from the proud brooding mountains, and the fields green as a green banner, there exhaled some subtle thing that made men lose sense of worldly proportion.... It was in their mothers' milk, a subtle poison. It crept into their veins, and though they might leave Ireland, yet for generations would it persist.... It gave them the gift of laughter, and contempt for physical pain, and an egregious sensitiveness.... So that the world wondered ... their wars were merry wars, and their poetry sobbed, like a bereaved woman.... They threw their lives away recklessly, and a phrase meant much to them.... Perhaps they knew that action counted nothing, and emotion all.... Ah, there he was losing himself!
At any rate, Ulster Scot though he was, he didn't regret it—apart even from its bringing him Granya. Perhaps at the news of it, some hard English official might feel a twitch at his heart-strings, and remembering that the Irish were as little children, be kind to some reprobate Celt.... An action had so many antennæ. One never knew where its effects stopped, if ever....
A foolish thing that had brought him joy where wisdom brought him sorrow! Strange. Until then he had been existent, sentient, but never until then alive. Wonder, disillusionment, passion, tragedy, despair. In each of these moods he had had a glimpse, now and then, of an immense universal design, as a bird may have it, and its throat quivering with song, or as a salmon may have it, and he flinging himself tremendously over a weir. He knew it, as a tree knows when the gentle rains of April come. But that he existed, as an entity apart from trees, from salmon, and from birds, he had not known until Granya, broken, had crept weeping into his arms....
"Give me strength, Shane, for God's sake. Give me strength, or I die!"
And somewhere, out of something, some esoteric, where he had plucked strength and given it to her, and he knew it wasn't from his body, or from his mind, or his spirit even, he had given it. He had, from some tremendous storehouse, got life for her, got peace, so that she fluttered like a pigeon and sighed and grew calm.... And in that moment he knew he was alive.
He tried to figure it to himself in terms of concrete things, and he said: "If I were a racing-boat now, I would decide how to make a certain buoy, and my mind would figure how to get there, what tack to make, the exact moment of breaking out the spinnaker rounding the mark. Perhaps my mind is nothing, something I use just now, as I use my body. For the hand on the rudder is not I. It is something I am using to hold that rudder. As I might lash it with a rope, if I were so minded. And my eyes are just something I use. They are just like the indicators on the stays; they and the indicators are one, to tell me how the wind shifts. All that is not I. It is something I use. Perhaps even my mind is something I use, as I use my hands. But somewhere, somewhere within me, is I."
And a great sense of exaltation and wonder and dignity swept through every fiber of him at the thought of this: new-born he was, clean as a trout, naked as a knife, strong as the sea. He was one of the lords of the kindly trees, masters of the pretty flowers: the little animals of God were given him, it being known he would not abuse the gift.... And though lightning should strike him yet he would not die, but put off his body like a rent garment.... And though he were to meet the savage bear in the forest, and have no means of conquering it, yet were he to become aware of this entity of life in him, he would smile at the thought of physical danger, and the great furry thing would recognize that dignity and be abashed.... And there was no more wonder, or mystery, or fear, only beauty.... The moon was not any more a mystery, but a place to be trodden one day, were his place to be there.... And the furthest star was no further than the further island on terrestrial seas; one day he would reach that star, somehow, as now he could the furthest island with head and hand.... Though death should smite his body he would not die.
§ 4
A strange thing was this, that Granya had always known this life. It was so certain to her that it was no more a wonder than rain is, or sunshine, or the rising of the moon....
He had spoken of it to her one evening in the dusk. She had smiled, her grave beautiful smile.