 The 19th-century Irish author of "Lough Derg Pilgrim" William Carleton (Section II) and the poets Patrick Kavanagh and Gerard Manley Hopkins are among the literary figures in whom Heaney finds inspiration and meets on his pilgrimage (Section V).The final section of the poem, Section XII, ends with a fictional encounter between Heaney and James Joyce who, following the Dantean motif, assumes the role of Virgil.Joyce allows Heaney a freedom from the self-questioning stance he has assumed throughout the poem when he tells him that "the main thing is to write / for the joy of it...And don't be so earnest, // let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.