From The Dead by James Joyce

[Gabriel Conroy is sitting alone in a hotel room. His wife has cried herself to sleep on the bed beside him – as she remembers her first lover Michael Furey, who died very young. On this night – Epiphany, Gabriel has been the host at his elderly aunts annual party. He has given a successful speech, been insulted by an independently minded woman and felt humiliated by a girl servant who has refused his Christmas gift of money. As he sits on the corner of the bed he thinks...]

“A few light taps upon the window 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 on the Bog of Allan 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.”