FINNEGANS WAKE

transition

transition proofs, 1st set, February 1928, §2C draft level 8

MS missing Draft details

Well, I hate to look at alarms but I hear from my seeless socks 'tis time to be up and ambling. This shack's not big enough for me now. I'm going. I know I am. I could bet I am. Somewhere I must get, far away from Banba shore, wherever I
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am. So I think I'll take freeboots' advice. I'll borrow a path to lend me wings, quickquack, and from Jehusalem's wall, clickclack, to Cheerup street I'll travel the void world over. It's Winland for moyne, bick buck! Geejakers! I hurt meself nettly that time! Come, my good frogmarchers! Was not my mutther a Runningwater? And the big one that quickened her the seaborne Fingale? Squall aboard for Kew, hop! Farewell awhile to her and thee! The brine's my bride to be. It's now or never. Here goes the enemy! I bless all to the west as Whatllwewhistlem sang to the kerryboys. Fik yew! I'm through. Won. Toe. Adry. You watch my smoke.

After poor Jaun the Boast's last fireless words ending in smoke twentyaid add one were pouring to his bysistance but, repulsing all attempts
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at first hands on, our greatly misunderstood one we perceived to give himself some sort of a hermetic prod or kick to sit up and take notice which acted like magic while the phalanx of daughters of February Filldyke voiced approval in their customary manner by dropping kneedeep in tears over their midnight sunflower(8, themselves a loveleaved missinightion,8) and splattering together joyously the pats of their tappy hands as they viewed him, the just one, their darling, away.

Jaun just then I saw to collect from the gentlest weeper among the wailers (who by this were in half droop leaf long mourning for the passing of the last post) the familiar yellow label into which he let fall a drop, smothered a curse, choked a guffaw, spat expectoration and blew his own trumpet. And next thing was he gummalicked the stickyback side and stamped the oval badge of belief to his agnellous brow with a genuine dash of irrepressible piety that readily turned his ladylike typmanzelles capsy curvy (the holy scamp!) with a half a glance of Irish frisky from under the shag of his parallel brows. It was then he waved a hand across the sea as notice to quit but in selfrighting the balance of him to exchange embraces with the pillarbosom of the Dizzy he loved best, bad luck to the lie but, when next to nobody expected, he toppled a lipple on to the off and, making a brandnew start for himself by blessing his stars with the sign of the southern cross, his bungalow hat blew off in a loveblast and Jawjon Redhead, bucketing after, kingscouriered round with an easy rush by the bridge beyond Ladycastle (and he narrowly missed fouling her buttress for her in the act) and then away with him at the double, the hulk of a garron, pelting after the road on Shanks's mare (the bouchal! you'd think it was that moment they gave him the legs!) with a posse of tossing hankerwaves to his windward like seraph's summonses and a tempest of good things in packetshape teeming from all accounts into the funnel of his shrimpnet, along the highroad of the nation, Traitors' Trot, following which
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he was quickly lost to sight through the statuemen, though without a doubt he was all the more on that account to memory dear, while Sickerson, that auxiliary, he murmured full of woe: Where maggot Harvey kneeled till bags? Ate Andrew coos hogdam farvel!

Whethen, may the good people now speed you, rural Haun, export stout fellow that you are, ay, and heart in hand of Shamrogueshire! May your bawny hair grow rarer and fairer, our own only whiteheaded boy! Rest your voice! Feed your mind! Mint your peas! Coax your qyous! Good by nature and natural by design, had you but been spared to us, Hauneen lad, but sure where's the use my talking quicker when I know you'll hear me all astray? My long farewell I send to you, fair dream of sport and game and always something new. Gone is Haun! My grief, my ruin! 'Tis well you'll be looked after from last to first as yon beam of light we follow receding on your photophoric pilgrimage to your antipodes in the past, you who so often consigned your distributory tidings of great joy into our nevertoolatetolove box, dearest Haun of them all, you of the boots, true as a die, stepwalker, pennyatimer, lampaddyfair. Thy now palewaning light lucerne we ne'er may see again. But could it speak how nicely would it splutter to the four cantons praises be to thee! For you had — may I dare to say it? — the nucleus of a glow of zeal of service such as rarely if ever have I met with in single men. There are folks still unclaimed by the death angel in this country of ours today who will fervently pray to the Spirit above that they may never depart this earth of theirs till on his long run Johnny Walker comes marching ahome on the summer crust of the flagway. Life, it is true, will be a blank without you, a slip of the time between a date and a ghostmark from the night we are and feel to the yesterselves we dread to remember.

But, boy, you did your strong nine furlong mile in slick and slapstick record time and a farfetched deed it was in troth, champion docile with your high bouncing gait of going, and your feat will be contested for centuries to come. Ay, already the sombrer opacities of the gloom are sphanished! Brave footsore Haun! Hold to! Win out, ye divil ye! The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake. Walk while ye have the night, for morn, lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth whereon every post shall full fast sleep.