The words selected to inform the actions - the adverbs - are like a mother’s gentle whispers to a child in the unsettled night. The unadorned writing in the paragraph provides a firm cadence and strong Anglo-Saxon words.

At this moment of the end, defied in the intimate soul of his wife, Gabriel has lost his place. What do the grace notes do to this passage, and to our experience of Gabriel’s quiet ending of hopelessness, divorced from true passion in his history, his life and his love? Through the entire novella, illumination is flickering and perceptions are shrouded in shadow and colored by the ritual of the holiday dinner. His soul swooned as he heard the snow falling through the universe and falling, like the descent of their end, upon all the living and the dead. It lay drifted on the crosses and headstones, on the spears of the gate, on the thorns. It was falling too upon every part of the churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried.

It was falling upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, falling into the waves. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. Now, read it again, without the adverbs and the adjectives: 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.

It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

Michael furey the dead