The Dead

The most beautiful final paragraph in all of English literature is that of James Joyce’s “The Dead.”

It reminds me of my brother Gerry, who loved the winter snows—he told me that walking to the old Gananoque Junction station in the winter night together to smoke contraband cigarettes was his fondest memory. And Gerry loved the St. Lawrence River, dark at night like the River Shannon, dark like the flow of time, and now Gerry is dead, as Michael Furey is dead. 

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.