The poem went on. There was now a ring of hands, Edward to Sarah to Johnny Fitzgerald across to the nurse, weeping uncontrollably, to Lady Lucy, to Powerscourt, to Olivia and Thomas and a last link to Christopher in his basket. A circle of love, with words by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
‘It may that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.’
Christopher smiled once more, this time at his mother. He seemed to like smiling. Maybe he was going to be a happy child. Everybody round the bed felt certain that Powerscourt had turned the corner, that he wasn’t going to die. A very faint colour was beginning to return to his cheeks. Lady Lucy felt incredibly tired suddenly as she looked at her Francis. She wondered if she would have the courage to ask him to give up investigating for ever when they went to Positano. Edward was thinking of the terrible ordeal Powerscourt had gone through in solving a couple of murders in an Inn of Court. Sarah supposed she would have to describe this extraordinary scene to her mother, the return of Lazarus Powerscourt, Powerscourt Redux, helped on his journey back to life by a beautiful first smile from his baby boy. Casting his eyes down to the end of the poem, Johnny Fitzgerald knew how right Lady Lucy had been to insist on his reading to the very end of ‘Ulysses’. For these last lines could be Powerscourt’s epitaph, not an epitaph for him now, but one that would serve so well when his life had run its natural course. Johnny let his oldest and closest friend say the final words on his own, Lord Francis Powerscourt’s voice firm now, his two sons holding hands, his own hands locked with those of his wife and his daughter.
‘Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’