“At That Hour” by James Joyce

I’ve written many times in this column about the wide range of interpretations that poetry is open to. I definitely faced that this week when I found “At That Hour,” by James Joyce. Joyce is, by nature, a very complex writer, and this is something I had to remind myself of when I read the piece and wasn’t entirely sure how to construe it. I came up with multiple readings, but one of the most interesting is that love is more powerful than death, and will always overcome it:

At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?

When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?

Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.

James Joyce

I believe that night is used as a symbol for death in the poem. That is why “all things have repose” (1); they have entered eternal sleep. In the second stanza, the man going “on his way” (8) has died, and is entering the next, and final, stage of life. Love in the poem is a form of light that brightens “night’s” darkness. Even though there will always be death, as long as there is love, everything will be alright. Those in mourning call upon the power of love to get them through the pain of their loved ones’ deaths: it is the only thing that can “unclose/The pale gates of sunrise…” (4-5). The light of love conquers death, the way the emerging sun puts an end to night. This is why “the night wind answer[s] in antiphon/Till night is overgone” (9-10); death has a defense, it has the ability to cause others pain, but in the end it is always “overgone” by love.

In the poem, the mourner, the “lonely watcher of the skies” (2), learns this lesson through his observations. After a death, the mourner is initially only aware of the pain death has inflicted upon him, the “night wind” (3). But by the end of the poem, as the darkness of death gradually takes people (signified by the “soft lights” that “go” [13]), the mourning individual comes to be at peace with death. Because he understands the power of love, and its everlasting quality (the harps will always “play on” [11] for love), the mourner accepts the inevitability of death. Even in “the hour” (13) when life’s “light” goes out and people must venture out into death’s “darkness,” love remains forever “aglow” (12); the light of love can never go out. And because the mourner finally realizes this, he is able to recognize the harmony that exists between those that have just died and those that have been gone for a long time. Love extends to everyone that has passed away, no matter how long it has been. And that’s why “soft sweet music” (14) can be heard both “in the air above/And in the earth below” (14-15).

*James Joyce photo credit: The New York Times

Related Reading:

• More on James Joyce
• My piece on James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead”