Joyce

Let's look at a little moment in the famous Irish writer James Joyce's [1882-1941] book of easy to read short stories Dubliners--from his most famous story, the last one in the collection, The Dead; read it all here.

This excerpt is a great moment of passion, of fire. Many people can relate to the feelings coursing through Gabriel as he thinks about his wife; how often are we electrified by our emotions? How easily the rest of our mind, the reason or logos, slips away and we do not see it go. He is caught up in a second of intensity:
[...]

She was walking on before him with Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, her shoes in a brown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude, but Gabriel's eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along his veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud, joyful, tender, valorous.

She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he called out to the man at the furnace:

"Is the fire hot, sir?"

[...]