declinous trees

The language Gerty borrows from such fantasies and the other languages of popular culture that surface in the novel constitute frustrated protomyths that seek universal significance for the everyday in ways that correspond to Joyce's strategies. Though these protomyths fail, they are not treated altogether unsympathetically.

In a few weeks he [William III of England] had changed the relative position of all the states in Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had destroyed.

the whirly pattern on the wallpaper