W.B. Yeats wrote of the efforts he and his friends made to construct a national culture and a civilised society in Ireland, only to realise with the onset of violence and civil strife that they were just "weasels fighting in a hole".
His sentiments come to mind from time to time, especially when a violent incident rocks the peace process and discommodes those trying to concentrate on negotiations for a settlement.
Time is running out. The target date is the Wednesday or Thursday before Easter (April 8th and 9th). The governments are driving the process hard, but some doubt their ability to coax and cajole the parties to the finish-line.
Papers summarising the areas of broad agreement and listing the outstanding differences have been discussed, and this continues next week. Wide but not unbridgeable differences remain between the SDLP and the UUP on the powers and structure of a Northern assembly in Strand One.
The powers of the North-South council in Strand Two are more contentious. There is a new confidence in the unionist camp that they can "win" in Strand Two, and they point to the renewed stress on the equality agenda as evidence that nationalists and republicans realise this. However, SDLP sources state there is "still no sense of the UUP recognising nationalist needs, particularly with regard to Strand Two".
The week after next will be taken up by the St Patrick's Day celebrations in Washington. There will be no formal negotiations but, as one talks insider put it, "hopefully the mood music will be good".
All green-beer hangovers and jetlag will have to be cleared in time for March 23rd, which is the beginning of the three-week crunch period at the end of which a settlement is meant to emerge.
"That's when the harvest has got to be gathered," said one Dublin mandarin. There has been speculation that a joint British-Irish document might be tabled on March 23rd, but there is concern that this might only create a big target for snipers. Instead there could be a series of papers, possibly tabled by the three chairmen rather than the governments.
The parties might be sequestered for the week beginning March 30th, perhaps in Wales, and in a venue off-limits to the media.
If an agreement is hammered out, it will, of course, be put to referendum, North and South. The Dail returns on April 21st, and 30 days must elapse between an order for a referendum and the vote, so polling day may be around May 22nd. This sets back Dr Mowlam's plan for a vote on May 7th, but the two referendums will lose a fair amount of moral force with nationalists if they are not held on the same day. Can the governments and the parties pull it off? A senior Dublin source said: "It's a tall order, but the belief is that it can be done."
The issue of Sinn Fein's return to the talks and its meeting with Mr Blair, not to mention the reaction of the Ulster Unionists, will probably dominate events next week.
It has been observed that Sinn Fein tends to talk more about nationalists and less about republicans, as though it was making a play for the middle ground, a "dawn raid" on the SDLP.
Sinn Fein points out, for example, that opposition to an assembly is not the position of an unrepresentative fringe in the North, but "a mainstream nationalist position" and Dublin was going to have to take that into account.
Sinn Fein rejects the concept of a May endgame resulting in Partition Mark Two. "Dublin needs to understand that's not going to be acceptable."
Sinn Fein's criterion for assessing an agreement would be "how far it goes in addressing the causes of conflict". Republicans would be seeking arrangements to facilitate the transition to a united Ireland, but the broader nationalist constituency would want its short-term areas of concern, such as policing, equality in employment and housing, and other issues addressed in "a real and tangible way".
Independent observers wonder, in the event Sinn Fein rejects an agreement, where that leaves the IRA. According to this analysis, much will depend on Dublin's ability to correct London's natural tendency to tilt towards the unionists.
There would be risks for Sinn Fein, however, in rejecting an agreement outright and then canvassing for a negative vote in the referendums. A joint Blair-Ahern campaign on a slogan like "Who's afraid of peace?", with Bill Clinton cheering from the sidelines, could place anti-settlement campaigners from both the unionist and republican camps in an isolated position.
The position of Mr David Trimble in the process is being watched with great interest on all sides. He must submit his name for re-election at the party's a.g.m. on March 21st, two days before the talks crunch begins. The two governments will be taking extra care not to embarrass him before that date.
Talks insiders conceded that, at any stage, parties could "balk and walk" but pointed out that the elements of an agreement are known to everyone in the process and "they have not blinked". There were disagreements, of course, and big gaps remained but, apart from the DUP and UK Unionists, the parties were still at the table and in negotiation.
When the full story of the talks comes to be written there may be at least one chapter on the British government's efforts at keeping the unionists sweet in the hope that if they stayed in the process long enough they would find it impossible to leave. But nobody is naive enough to predict the unionists will stay to the end. As one talks insider confessed: "It's so delicate, you wouldn't know which way it will go."