MARTIN.
I have been beyond the earth. In Paradise, in that happy townland, I have seen the shining people. They were all doing one thing or another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was but the overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred of the secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made a sound that was like laughter.
THOMAS.
You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right to have minded you better.
MARTIN.
No man can be alive, and what is paradise but fulness of life, if whatever he sets his hand to in the daylight cannot carry him from exaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy of contemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joy are misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy if the joy of a thousand years has not been crushed into a moment.
THOMAS.
And I offered to let you go to Dublin in the coach!
MARTIN [giving banner to PAUDEEN].
Give me the lamp. The lamp has not yet been lighted and the world is to be consumed!