The Waste Land (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land
  by T.S. Eliot 1922

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis

vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:

Σίβιλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεϊν θέλω.”

For Ezra Pound

il miglior fabbro.

The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man^[1],

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,^[2]

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?^[3]

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.^[4]

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards^[5]. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes.^[6] Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City^[7],

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many^[8].

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled^[9],

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.^[10]

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,^[11]

Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”^[12]

A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,^[13]

Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

From satin cases poured in rich profusion;

In vials of ivory and coloured glass

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Flung their smoke into the laquearia^[14],

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.

Above the antique mantel was displayed

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene^[15]

The change of Philomel^[16], by the barbarous king

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale^[17]

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

And other withered stumps of time

Were told upon the walls; staring forms

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

I think we are in rats’ alley^[18]

Where the dead men lost their bones.

“What is that noise?”

The wind under the door.^[19]

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

Nothing again nothing.

“Do

You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

Nothing?”

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”^[20]

But

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—

It’s so elegant

So intelligent

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”

I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street

“With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?

“What shall we ever do?”

The hot water at ten.

And if it rains, a closed car at four.

And we shall play a game of chess,

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.^[21]

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.

He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.

You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,

He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.

And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,

He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,

And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.

Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.

Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.

Others can pick and choose if you can’t.

But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.

(And her only thirty-one.)

I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,

It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.

(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)

The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.

You are a proper fool, I said.

Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,

What you get married for if you don’t want children?

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.^[22]

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I was fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck

And on the king my father’s death before him.^[23]

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.

But at my back from time to time I hear^[24]

The sound of horns and motors,^[25] which shall bring

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter^[26]

And on her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!^[27]

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d.

Tereu

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants^[28]

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias,^[29] though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,^[30]

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the expected guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronising kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.^[31]

“This music crept by me upon the waters”^[32]

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour^[33] of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats^[34]

Oil and tar

The barges drift

With the turning tide

Red sails

Wide

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The barges wash

Drifting logs

Down Greenwich reach

Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester^[35]

Beating oars

The stern was formed

A gilded shell

Red and gold

The brisk swell

Rippled both shores

Southwest wind

Carried down stream

The peal of bells

White towers

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”^[36]

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.

I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

la la

To Carthage then I came^[37]

Burning burning burning burning^[38]

O Lord Thou pluckest me out^[39]

O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss. 
                                            A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool. 
                                            Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

What the Thunder Said^[40]

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit-thrush^[41] sings in the pine trees

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?^[42]

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air^[43]

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta:^[44] what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider^[45]

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison^[46]

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands
                                I sat upon the shore

Fishing,^[47] with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina^[48]

Quando fiam uti chelidon^[49]—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie^[50]

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.^[51]

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih^[52]

* * * * *

T.S. Eliot’s Notes on The Waste Land:

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

1. Cf. Ezekiel 2:1.
   
2. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.
   
3. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5-8.
   
4. Id. iii, verse 24.
   
5. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.
   
6. Cf. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 1, scene 2.
   
7. Cf. Baudelaire:
   

   
   

   “Fourmillante cite;, cite; pleine de rêves,
   

   Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”

   
   
8. Cf. Inferno, iii. 55-7.
   

   
   

   “si lunga tratta
   

   di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto
   

   che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”

   
   
9. Cf. Inferno, iv. 25-7:
   

   
   

   “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
   

   “non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,
   

   “che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”

   
   
10. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
    
11. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.
    
12. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.
    
13. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.
    
14. V. Aeneid, I. 726:
    

    
    

    dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

    
    
15. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.
    
16. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, Philomela.
    
17. Cf. Part III, l. 204.
    
18. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
    
19. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”
    
20. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
    
21. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.
    
22. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.
    
23. Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.
    
24. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.
    
25. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees:
    

    
    

    “When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
    

    “A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
    

    “Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
    

    “Where all shall see her naked skin . . .”

    
    
26. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
    
27. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.
    
28. The currants were quoted at a price “cost, insurance and freight to London”; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
    
29. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:
    

    
    

    ‘. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
    

    Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’
    

    Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
    

    Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
    

    Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
    

    Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
    

    Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
    

    Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
    

    Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’
    

    Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
    

    Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem
    

    Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
    

    Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
    

    Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
    

    Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
    

    Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
    

    At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
    

    Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
    

    Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

    
    
30. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.
    
31. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.
    
32. V. The Tempest, as above.
    
33. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).
    
34. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.
    
35. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:
    

    
    

    “In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

    
    
36. Cf. Purgatorio, v. 133:
    

    
    

    “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
    

    Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

    
    
37. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”
    
38. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
    
39. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
    
40. In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
    
41. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.
    
42. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.
    
43. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos:
    

    
    

    “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

    
    
44. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.
    
45. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, v. vi:
    

    
    

    “. . . they’ll remarry
    

    Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
    

    Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.”

    
    
46. Cf. Inferno, xxxiii. 46:
    

    
    

    “ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto
    

    all’orribile torre.”

    
    

    
    

    Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346:

    
    

    
    

    “My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”

    
    
47. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.
    
48. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148.
    

    
    

    “‘Ara vos prec per aquella valor
    

    ‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
    

    ‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’
    

    Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”

    
    
49. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
    
50. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.
    
51. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.
    
52. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble translation of the content of this word.

     

Sweeney Among the Nightingales (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Sweeney Among the Nightingales
[from Poems, 1920]

    ῶμοι, πἐπληγμαι καιρίαν πλημὴν ἔσω

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wisteria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid droppings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud. 



* * * * *


     

Le Directeur (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Le Directeur
by T.S. Eliot
[Written in French, from Eliot’s Poems, 1920]

Malheur à la malheureuse Tamise
Qui coule si près du Spectateur.
Le directeur
Conservateur
Du Spectateur
Empeste la brise.
Les actionnaires
Réactionnaires
Du Spectateur
Conservateur
Bras dessus bras dessous
Font des tours
A pas de loup.
Dans un égout
Une petite fille
En guenilles
Camarde
Regarde
Le directeur
Du Spectateur
Conservateur
Et crève d’amour.


* * *

The Director
[English translation courtesy of Wikisource]

Evil to the unhappy Thames
Which flows so close to The Spectator. The
Conservative
Director
Of The Spectator
Fouls the breeze.
The reactionary
Shareholders of the
Conservative
Spectator
With folded arms
And stealthy step
Encircle.
In a gutter
A little girl
In rags,
With flattened nose
Looks at the
Conservative
Director
Of The Spectator
And starves for love.

* * * * *


     

Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
[from Poems, 1920]

Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars.      — THE JEW OF MALTA.

Polyphiloprogenitive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of τὸ ἔν,
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.

A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned

But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
                . . . . .

The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.

Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.

Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistilate,
Blest office of the epicene.

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath. 




* * * * *


     

Dans le Restaurant (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Dans le Restaurant
[from Poems, 1920]

Le garçon délabré qui n’a rien à faire
Que de se gratter les doigts et se pencher sur mon épaule:
  “Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux,
  Du vent, du grand soleil, et de la pluie;
  C’est ce qu’on appelle le jour de lessive des gueux.”
(Bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie,
Je te prie, au moins, ne bave pas dans la soupe).
  “Les saules trempés, et des bourgeons sur les ronces—
  C’est là, dans une averse, qu’on s’abrite.
J’avais sept ans, elle était plus petite.
  Elle était toute mouillée, je lui ai donné des primevères.”
Les taches de son gilet montent au chiffre de trente-huit.
  “Je la chatouillais, pour la faire rire.
  J’éprouvais un instant de puissance et de délire.”
 
  Mais alors, vieux lubrique, à cet âge . . . 
“Monsieur, le fait est dur.
  Il est venu, nous peloter, un gros chien;
  Moi j’avais peur, je l’ai quittée à mi-chemin.
  C’est dommage.”
      Mais alors, tu as ton vautour!
 
Va t’en te décrotter les rides du visage;
Tiens, ma fourchette, décrasse-toi le crâne.
De quel droit payes-tu des expériences comme moi?
Tiens, voilà dix sous, pour la salle-de-bains.
 
Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain:
Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin,
Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.
Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible;
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille. 


[Eliot wrote this poem in French.  When I find a good English translation, I’ll post it in the comments below.]



* * * * *


     

Lune de Miel (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Lune de Miel
[from Poems, 1920]

Ils ont vu les Pays-Bas, ils rentrent Terre Haute;
Mais une nuit d’été, les voici Ravenne,
A l’sur le dos écartant les genoux
De quatre jambes molles tout gonflées de morsures.
On relve le drap pour mieux égratigner.
Moins d’une lieue d’ici est Saint Apollinaire
In Classe, basilique connue des amateurs
De chapitaux d’acanthe que touraoie le vent.

Ils vont prendre le train de huit heures
Prolonger leurs misères de Padoue Milan
Ou se trouvent le Cène, et un restaurant pas cher.
Lui pense aux pourboires, et rédige son bilan.
Ils auront vu la Suisse et traversé la France.
Et Saint Apollinaire, raide et ascètique,
Vieille usine désaffectée de Dieu, tient encore
Dans ses pierres croulantes la forme précise de Byzance. 


[Eliot wrote this poem in French.  When I find a good English translation, I’ll post it in the comments below.]



* * * * *


     

The Hippopotamus (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

The Hippopotamus
[from Poems, 1920]

Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum, ut Jesum Christum, existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros autem, ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de quibus suadeo vos sic habeo.            S. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS.

And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans.

The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.

Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo’s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.

The ‘potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo’s voice
Betrays inliexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.

The hippopotamus’s day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way–
The Church can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the ‘potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr’d virgins kiss,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist. 




* * * * *


     

Mélange Adultère de Tout (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Mélange Adultère de Tout
[from Poems, 1920]

En Amérique, professeur;
En Angleterre, journaliste;
C’est à grands pas et en sueur
Que vous suivrez à peine ma piste.
En Yorkshire, conférencier;
A Londres, un peu banquier,
Vous me paierez bein la tête.
C’est à Paris que je me coiffe
Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.
En Allemagne, philosophe
Surexcité par Emporheben
Au grand air de Bergsteigleben;
J’erre toujours de-ci de-là
A divers coups de tra là là
De Damas jusqu’à Omaha.
Je célébrai mon jour de fête
Dans une oasis d’Afrique
Vetu d’une peau de girafe.
 
On montrera mon cénotaphe
Aux côtes brulantes de Mozambique. 


[Eliot wrote this poem in French.  When I find a good English translation, I’ll post it in the comments below.]



* * * * *


     

A Cooking Egg (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

A Cooking Egg
[from Poems, 1920]

     En l’an trentiesme de mon age
     Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beucs …

Pipit sat upright in her chair
  Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
  Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
  Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
  An Invitation to the Dance.
                  . . . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
  For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
  And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
  For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond:
We two shall lie together, lapt
  In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
  Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
  Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
  Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
  Piccarda de Donati will conduct me …
                  . . . . . .
But where is the penny world I bought
  To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
  From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

  Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
  Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s 



* * * * *


     

Whispers of Immortality (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot

Whispers of Immortality
[from Poems, 1920]

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
            . . . . .

Grishkin is nice: her
Russian eye is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm. 



* * * * *