Finnegans Wake slice

What's great about James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is the diversity in it--it's like a huge prose poem with different parts. Just like Hilda Doolittle's long poetic volume Helen in Egypt, about Helen of Troy, except less Imagist and more stream of consciousness. 

This particular section has a really interesting set of imagery, and I like how it's very modern and yet touched with erudition and history--you can see how Joyce was coming from a place of serious intellectual standing, not just throwing around simple nonsense like many more modern people. Only the truly educated can make worthwhile modern pieces.

I like this Finnegans Wake section in part four, page 606; here's more:

[...]                                    so that, well understanding, she should
fill to midheight his tubbathaltar, which hanbathtub, most blessed
Kevin, ninthly enthroned, in the concentric centre of the trans-
lated water, whereamid, when violet vesper vailed, Saint Kevin,
Hydrophilos, having girded his sable cappa magna as high as to
his cherubical loins, at solemn compline sat in his sate of wis-
dom, that handbathtub, whereverafter, recreated doctor insularis
of the universal church, keeper of the door of meditation, memory
extempore proposing and intellect formally considering, recluse,
he meditated continuously with seraphic ardour the primal sacra-
ment of baptism or the regeneration of all man by affusion of
water. Yee. [...]

This passage made me think of this part of The Odyssey [book five: around line 50] actually, here is Kline's version:

So Hermes travelled over the endless breakers, until he reached the distant isle, then leaving the violet sea he crossed the land, and came to the vast cave where the nymph of the lovely tresses lived, and found her at home.

          A great fire blazed on the hearth, and the scent of burning cedar logs and juniper spread far across the isle. Sweet-voiced Calypso was singing within, moving to and fro at her loom, weaving with a golden shuttle. Around the cave grew a thick copse of alder, poplar and fragrant cypress, where large birds nested, owls, and falcons, and long-necked cormorants whose business is with the sea. And heavy with clustered grapes a mature cultivated vine went trailing across the hollow entrance. And four neighbouring springs, channelled this way and that, flowed with crystal water, and all around in soft meadows iris and wild celery flourished. [...]

And here is Cowper's version:

So arm’d, forth flew the valiant Argicide.Alighting on Pieria, down he stoop’dTo Ocean, and the billows lightly skimm’d60In form a sew-mew, such as in the baysTremendous of the barren Deep her foodSeeking, dips oft in brine her ample wing.In such disguise o’er many a wave he rode,But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsookThe azure Deep, and at the spacious grot,Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived,Found her within. A fire on all the hearthBlazed sprightly, and, afar-diffused, the scentOf smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood70Odorous, burning, cheer’d the happy isle.She, busied at the loom, and plying fastHer golden shuttle, with melodious voice Sat chaunting there; a grove on either side,Alder and poplar, and the redolent branchWide-spread of Cypress, skirted dark the cave.