Difficult Books

On page 37 of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus uses the phrase, "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?"

[Information on Sandymount strand can be found here.]

This phrase recalls a passage from William Blake's poem Milton: A Poem in 2 Books. Much of this poem involves the obscure mythology that Blake developed over the course of his life, and Joyce refers to this mythology by using the phrase Los Demiurgo that immediately precedes this sentence.

Here is the passage:

But Milton entering my Foot; I saw in the nether
Regions of the Imagination; also all men on Earth,
And all in Heaven, saw in the nether regions of the Imagination
In Ulro beneath Beulah, the vast breach of Miltons descent.
But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity: for more extensive
Than any other earthly things, are Mans earthly lineaments.

And all this Vegetable World appeard on my left Foot,
As a bright sandal formd immortal of precious stones & gold:
I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro' Eternity.

-- William Blake, Milton: A Poem in 2 Books