Outside the door a group of men stood whispering while the less solemn parts of the Mass were being said. These men stared about them at the rolling … - Patrick Kavanagh

I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women,
Nothing of cities,
I cannot die
Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that district. Reading about lovers kissing, Tarry often reflected on the fact that he had never seen anyone kissing anyone, except poor old Peter Toole whom he once saw kissing a corpse in a wakehouse in the hope of getting a couple of glasses of whiskey.

The headlands and the hedges were so fresh and wonderful, so gay with the dawn of the world. Tarry never tired looking at these ordinary things as he tired of the Mass and of religion. In a dim way he felt that he was not a Christian. In the god of Poetry he found a God more important to him than Christ. His god had never accepted Christ.