Collected Poems 1909-1962
Author: T.S. Eliot
Date: 1963-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Poetry; Classics; Literature; Fiction; 20th Century; American; British Literature; Nobel Prize; Classic Literature; Anthologies
Description: There is no more authoritative collection of the poetry that Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965. Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and includes such literary landmarks as The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
Publisher: Hartcourt Brace & Company

COLLECTED POEMS

1909-1962

By T. S. Eliot
verse

COLLECTED POEMS 1909-1935

FOUR Q UARTETS

THE COMPLETE POEMS AND PLAYS 1909-1950

THE CULTIVATION OF CHRISTMAS TREES

COLLECTED POEMS 1909-1962
selected verse

THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS
children's verse

OLD POSSUM's BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
plays

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

THE FAMILY REUNION

THE COCKTAIL PARTY

THE CONFIDENTIAL CLERK

THE ELDER STATESMAN
literary criticism

THE SACRED WOOD

SELECTED ESSAYS

THE USE OF POETRY AND THE USE OF CRITICISM

ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

ON POETRY AND POETS
social criticism

THE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY

NOTES TOWARDS THE DEFINITION OF CULTURE

CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE
translation

AN ABA sIs a poem by St.-John Perse

T. S. Eliot

COLLF-CTED

POEMS

1909-1962

Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

New York

Copyright 1930, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943,

© 1958, 1962, 1963 by T. S. Eliot Copyright 1954, © 1956, 1959, 1963 by Thomas Stearns Eliot Copyright 1934, 1936 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mechanical means, including mimeograph and tape recorder, without permission in writing from the publisher.

first American edition

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-21424

Manufactured in the United States of America by H. Wolff

C O N T E N TS

1

P R U F RO C K- 1 91 7

3

The Love Song of ]. Alfred Prufrock 8

Portrait of a Lady

13

Preludes

16

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

19 Morning at the Window

20

The Boston Evening Transcript

21

Aunt Helen

22

Cousin Nancy

23

Mr. Apollinax

24

Hysteria

25

Conversation Galante

26

La Figlia che Piange

27

P 0 E M S- 1 9 2 o

29 Gerontion

32

Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 34

Sweeney Erect

36

A Cooking Egg

38

Le Directeur

39 Melange Adultere de Tout

40

Lune de M iel

41

The Hippopotamus

43

Dans le Restaurant

45

Whispers of Immortality

47

Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service

49

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

51

T H E W A S T E L A N D - 1 92 2

53

I. The Burial of the Dead

56

II. A Game of Chess

6o

Ill. The Fire Sermon

65

IV. Death by Water

66

V. What the Thunder Said

70

N O T E S o N 'The Waste Land'

77

T H E H O L L O W M E N - 1 92 5

83

A S H - W E D N E S D A Y- 1 9 3 o

85

I. Because I do not hope to turn again 87

II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree 89 Ill. At the first turning of the second stair 90

IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet 92

V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent 94

VI. Although I do not hope to turn again

97

A R I E L PO E M S

99

Journey of the Magi-1927

101

A Song for Simeon-1928

103

Animula-1929

105

Marina-1930

107

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees-1954

109

U N F I N I S H E D PO E M S

111

Sweeney Agonistes

111

F R A G M E N T O F A P R O L O G U E
u8

F R A G M EN T O F AN A G ON

125

Coriolan

125

I . T R I U M P HA L M A R C H -1931

127

I I • D IFF I C U L T I E S OF A S TA T E S MAN

131 MI NO R PO E M S

133

Eyes that last I saw in tears

134

The wind sprang up at four o'clock 135

Five-finger exercises

135

I • L IN E S T 0 A P E R S I A N C A T

135

I I • L I N E S T 0 A Y 0 R K S H I R E T E R R I E R

136

I I I .

L I N E S T 0 A D U C K I N T H E P A R K

136

I V • L I N E S T 0 R A L P H H 0 D G S 0 N E S Q R E ,

137

V •

L I N E S F 0 R C U S C U S C A R A W A Y AN D M I R Z A M U R A D A LI B E G

138

Landscapes

138

I •

N E W H A M P S H I R E

139

I I •

V I R G IN I A

140

I II. U S K

141

IV • R AN N 0 C H , B Y G L EN C 0 E

142

V • C A P E A N N

143

Lines for an Old Man

145

C H O R U S E S F R O M ' T H E R O C K ' - 1 93 4

147

I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven 152

II. Thus your fathers were made

155 III. The Word of the LO R D came unto me, saying 158

IV. There are those who would build the Temple 159 V. 0 Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention ancl impure heart 16o

VI. It is hard for tlwse who have never known persecution

162

VII. In the beginning G o o created the u.:orld 165

VIII. 0 Father u.:e welcome your words 167

IX. Son of Man, behold u.:ith thine eyes, and hear with thine ears

16g

X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned

173

FO U R Q U A R T E TS

175

Burnt Norton-1935

182

East Coker-1940

191

The Dry Salvages-1941

200

Little Gidding-1942

211

0 C C A S I 0 N A L V E R S E S

213

Defense of the Islands

215

A Note on War Poetry

217

To the Indians Who Died in Africa

219

To Walter de la Mare

221

A Dedication to My Wife

P R U F R O C K
and Other Observations

I 9 I 7

For Jean Verdenal, I88g-1915
mort aux Dardanelles

Or puoi la quantitate
comprender dell'amor ch'a te mi scalda, quando dismento nostra vanitate,
trattando l' ombre come cosa salda.

The Love Song of ]. Alfred Prufrock

S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona clzc mai tornassc al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza pii't scossc.

Ma per cia che giarnmai di que5to fonda non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il cera, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

\Vhen the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells : Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question.

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the \vindow-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, aml fell asleep.

3

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'

Time to tum back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair

(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!') My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 1ly necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin

(They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!') Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all

Ha\·e known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 4

I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea ami cakes ami ices, 5

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet-and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Foohnan hold my coat, and snick�r.

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: 'I am Lazams, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'

If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,

"rould it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-And this, and so much more?-

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen :

Would it have been worth while

6

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:

'That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.•

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.

\Ve have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

7

Portrait of a Lady

Thou hast committed-

Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of �lalta.

I

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself-as it will seem to do

With 'I have saved this afternoon for you'; And four wax candles in the darkened room, Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb

Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.

We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.

'So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.'

-And so the conversation slips

Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins

Mingled with remote cornets

And begins.

'You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, ( For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? you are not blind!

How keen you are! )

To find a friend who has these qualities, 8

Who has, and gives

Those qualities upon which friendship lives.

How much it means that I say this to you

\Vithout these friendships-life, what cauchemar!'

Among the windings of the violins

And the aricttes

Of cracked cornets

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone

That is at least one definite 'false note.'

-Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments,

Discuss the late events,

Correct our watches hy the public clocks.

Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

I I

Now that lilacs arc in bloom

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know

\Vhat life is, you who hold it in your hands'; ( Slowly twisting the lilac stalks )

'You let it flow from you, you let it flow, And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see.'

I smile, of course,

And go on drinking tea.

9

'Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful, after all.'

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:

'I am always sure that you understand My feelings, always sure that you feel, Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.

You will go on, and when you have prevailed You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend, To give you, what can you receive from me?

Only the friendship and the sympathy

Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends. . . '

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends For what she has said to me?

You will see me any morning in the park Reading the comics and the sporting page.

Particularly I remark

An English countess goes upon the stage.

A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance, Another bank defaulter has confessed.

I keep my countenance,

I remain self-possessed

Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired 10

Reiterates some worn-out common song

\Vith the smell of hyacinths across the garden Recalling things that other people have desired.

Are these ideas right or wrong?

I I I

The October night comes down; returning as before Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease I mount the stairs and tum the handle of the door And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.

'Ami so you are going abroad; and when do you return?

But that's a useless question.

You hardly know when you are coming back, You will find so much to learn.'

l\Iy smile falls heavily among the bric-a-brac.

'Perhaps you can write to me:

My self-possession flares up for a second; This is as I had reckoned.

'I have been wondering frequently of late (But our beginnings never know our ends!)

\Vhy we have not developed into friends.'

I feel like one who smiles, and huning shall remark Suddenly, his e:\J>ression in a glass.

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

'For everybody said so, all our friends, They all were sure our feelings would relate So closely! I myself can hardly understand.

\Ve must leave it now to fate.

You will write, at any rate.

1 1

Perhaps it is not too late.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.'

And I must bmTow every changing shape To find expression . . . dance, dance Like a dancing bear,

Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance-

\Veil! and what if she should die some afternoon, Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose; Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand

\Vith the smoke coming clown above the housetops; Doubtful, for a while

Not knowing what to feel or if I understand Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon Would she not have the advantage, after all?

This music is successful with a 'dying fall'

Now that we talk of dying-

And should I have the right to smile?

12

Preludes

I

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

From the sawdust-trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes,

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

13

I I I

You tossed a blanket from the bed,

You lay upon your back, and waited;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing , The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the Jight crept up between the shutters And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands;

Sitting along the bed's edge, where

You curled the papers from your hair, Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

Ilis soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block,

Or trampled by insistent feet

At four and five and six o'clock;

And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes

Assured of certain certainties,

The conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that arc curled Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions.

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,

The street-lamp sputtered,

The street-lamp muttered,

The street-lamp said, 'Regard that woman Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is tom and stained with sand,

And you see the comer of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin.'

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A hvisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

16

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

The street-lamp said,

'Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter.'

So the hand of the child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was rnnning along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:

'Hcgard the moon,

La lunc ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smooths the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose,

17

That smells of dust and eau de Cologne, She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain.'

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,

'Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.'

The last twist of the knife.

Morning at the Window

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts An aimless smile that hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

19

The Boston Evening Transcript

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe com.

When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would tum to nod good-bye to La Rochefoucauld,

If the street were time and he at the end of the street, And I say, 'Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript:

20

Aunt Helen

Miss Helen Slings by was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four.

Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street.

The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet

He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.

The dogs were handsomely provided for, But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.

The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece, And the footman sat upon the dining-table Holding the second housemaid on his knees-Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

21

Cousin Nancy

Miss Nancy Ellicott

Strode across the hills and broke them, Rode across the hills and broke them

The barren New England hills

Riding to hounds

Over the cow-pasture.

Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked

And danced all the modem dances;

And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it.

But they knew that it was modem.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch

Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

22

A1r. Apollinax
fl T1j� KatvOT1fTO�. 'HpaKXfL�, T1j� 1rapaoo�o)\o{a�, EV��xavo� av0pW7rO�.

LUCIAN

When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States His laughter tinkled among the teacups.

I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, And of Priapus in the shrubbery

Gaping at the lady in the swing.

In the palace of �Irs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah's He laughed like an irresponsible fmtus.

His laughter was submarine and profound Like the old man of the sea's

Hidden under coral islands

Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,

Dropping from fingers of surf.

I looked for the head of 1\lr. Apollinax rolling under a chair Or grinning over a screen

With seaweed in its hair.

I heard the beat of centaur's hoofs over the hard turf As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.

'He is a charming man'-'But after all what did he mean?'

'His pointed cars . . . . He must be unhalanced.'-

'There was something he said that I might have challenged.'

Of dowager �Irs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: 'If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden . . .'

I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

Conversation Galante

I observe: 'Our sentimental friend the moon!

Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)

It may be Prester John's balloon

Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress.'

She then : 'How you digress!'

And I then : 'Someone frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and moonshine; music which we seize To body forth our own vacuity.'

She then : 'Does this refer to me?'

'Oh no, it is I who am inane.'

'You, madam, are the eternal humorist, The eternal enemy of the absolute,

Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!

With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute-'

And-'Are we then so serious?'

La Figlia che Piange

0 quam te memorem cirgo . . .

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair

Lean on a garden urn-

\Veave, weave the sunlight in your hair-Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise

Fling them to the ground and tum

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,

So I would have had her stand and grieve, So he would have left

As the soul leaves the body tom and bruised, As the mind deserts the body it has used.

I should find

Some way incomparably light and deft, Some way we both should understand,

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather Compelled my imagination many days,

Many days and many hours :

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.

And I wonder how they should have been together!

I should have lost a gesture and a pose.

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

P O E MS

I 9 2 0

Gerontion

Thou hast nor youth nor age

But as it were art after dirmer �;/eep Dreaming of both.

Here I am, an old man in a clry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

I was neither at the hot gates

Nor fought in the warm rain

Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, Bitten by flies, fought.

:My house is a decayed house,

And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner, Spawned in some cstaminet of Antwerp, Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.

The goat coughs at night in the field overhead; Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.

The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea, Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.

I an old man,

A dull head among windy spaces.

Signs are taken for wonders. '\Ve would see a sign!'

The word within a word, unahle to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger

In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas, To be eaten, to be divided, to be dnmk Among whispers; hy Mr. Silvcro

With caressing hands, at Limoges

Who walked all night in the next room;

By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians; By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp Who turned in the hall, one hand on the d<;>or.

Vacant shuttles

Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,

An old man in a draughty house

Under a windy knob.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's not believed in, or is still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last

We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation

Of the backward devils.

I would meet you upon this honestly.

I that was ncar your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.

I have lost my passion : why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste ami touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?

These with a thousand small deliberations Protract the profit of their chilled delirium, Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,

\Vi th pungent sauces, multiply variety In a wilderness of mirrors. \Vhat will the spider do, Suspend its operations, will the weevil Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, ;\Irs. Cammcl, whirled Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn.

\Vhite feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims, And an old man driven by the Trades

To a sleepy corner.

Tenants of the house,

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

Burbank with a Baedeker:

Bleistein with a Cigar

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire-nil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumus-tlle gondola stopped,' the old palace was there, how charming its grey and pinkgoats and monkeys, with such hair tool-so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented lzer with a cabinet, and so departed.

Burbank crossed a little bridge

Descending at a small hotel;

Princess Volupine arrived,

They were together, and he fell.

Defunctive music under sea

Passed seaward with the passing bell

Slowly: the God Hercules

Had left him, that had loved him well.

The horses, under the axletree

Beat up the dawn from !stria

With even feet. Her shuttered barge

Burned on the water all the day.

But this or such was Bleistein's way: A saggy bending of the knees

And elbows, with the palms turned out, Chicago Semite Viennese.

A lustreless protrusive eye

Stares from the protozoic slime

At a perspective of Canaletto.

The smoky candle end of time

Declines. On the Rialto once.

The rats are underneath the piles.

The Jew is underneath the lot.

Money in furs. The boabnan smiles,

Princess Volupine extends

A meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand

To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights, She entertains Sir Ferdinand

Klein. Who clipped the lion's wings

And flea'd his rump and pared his claws?

Thought Burbank, meditating on

Time's ruins, and the seven laws.

33

Sweeney Erect

And the trees about me,

Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks Groan with continual surges; and behind me Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches/

Paint me a cavernous waste shore

Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,

Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks

Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above

Reviewing the insurgent gales

Which tangle Ariadne's hair

And swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands

(Nausicaa and Polypheme).

Gesture of orang-outang

Rises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair

Slitted below and gashed with eyes,

This oval 0 cropped out with teeth:

The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees

Then straightens out from heel to hip Pushing the framework of the bed

And clawing at the pillow slip.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base, 34

Knows the female temperament

And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthened shadow of a man

Is history, said Emerson

Who had not seen the silhouette

Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.)

Tests the razor on his leg

Waiting until the shriek subsides.

The epileptic on the bed

Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

The ladies of the corridor

Find themselves involved, disgraced,

Call witness to their principles

And deprecate the lack of taste

Observing that hysteria

Might easily be misunderstood;

Mrs. Turner intimates

It does the house no sort of good.

But Doris, towelled from the bath,

Enters padding on broad feet,

Bringing sal volatile

And a glass of brandy neat.

35

A Cooking Egg

En l'an trentiesme de mon aage

Que toutes mes hontes fay beues . . •

Pipit sate upright in her chair

Some distance from where I was sitting; Views of Oxford Colleges

Lay on the table, with the lrnitting.

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.

37

Le Directeur

Malheur a Ia malheureuse Tamise

Qui coule si pres du Spectateur.

Le directeur

Conservateur

Du Spectateur

Empeste Ia brise.

Les actionnaires

Reactionnaires

Du Spectateur

Conservateur

Bras dessus bras dessous

Font des tours

A pas de loup.

Dans un egout

Une petite fille

En guenilles

Camarde

Regarde

Le directeur

Du Spectateur

Conservateur

Et creve d'amour.

Melange Adultere de Tout

En Amerique, professeur;

En Angleterre, journaliste;

C' est a grands pas et en sueur

Que vous suivrez a peine rna piste.

En Yorkshire, conferencier;

A Londres, un peu banquier,

Vous me paierez bien Ia tete.

C' est a Paris que je me coiffe

Casque noir de jemenfoutiste.

En Allemagne, philosophe

Surexcite par Emporheben

Au grand air de Bergsteigleben;

J'erre toujours de-ci de-la

A divers coups de tra Ia Ia

De Damas jusqu' a Omaha.

Je celebrai mon jour de fete

Dans une oasis d' Afrique

Vetu d'une peau de girafe.

On montrera mon cenotaphe

Aux cotes brulantes de Mozambique.

39

Lune de Miel
lis ont vu les Pays-Bas, ils rentrent a Terre Haute;

�1ais une nuit d'ete, les voici a Ravenne, .

A l'aise entre deux draps, chez deux centaines de punaises; La sueur aestivale, et une forte odeur de chienne.

lis restent sur le dos ecartant les genoux De quatre jambes molles tout gonflees de morsures.

On releve le drap pour miemc egratigner.

Mains d'une lieue d'ici est Saint Apollinaire En Classe, basilique connue des amateurs De chapitaux d'acanthe que tournoie le vent.

Ils vont prendre le train de huit hcures Prolonger leurs miseres de Padoue a Milan Ou sc trouvent Ia Cene, et un restaurant pas cher.

Lui pense aux pourboires, et redige son bilan.

lis auront vu Ia Suisse et traverse Ia France.

Et Saint Apollinaire, raide et ascetique, Vieille usine desaffectee de Dieu, tient encore Dans ses pierres ecroulantes Ia forme precise de Byzance.

The Hippopotamus

Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum ]esu Christi; et Episcopum, ut ]esum Christum, exi�tentcm filium Patris; Presbytcros autem, ut coucilium Dei ct coujrmclianem r\postolomm. Sine Iris Ecclesia nan vacatur; de quilms suadco vas sic fwbeo.

S. IG!'/AT!l AD TIIALLIA!'/OS.

And tclrcn this epistle is read amaug you, cause that it be reacl also in the clwrch of the Laodicecms.

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;

\Vhilc the True Church can never fail For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo's feeble steps may err

In compassing material ends,

\Vhile 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 ami peach

Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo's voice

Betrays inflexions hoarse ami 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 kist,

While the True Church remains below

Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

Dans le Restaurant

Le gar�on delabre qui n'a rien a faire Que de se gratter les doigts et sc peneher sur mon cpaule:

'Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux, Du vent, du grand soleil, et de Ia pluie; C'est ce qu'on appclle lc jour de lessive des gueux.'

(Bavard, baveux, a Ia croupc arrondie, Je te prie, au moins, ne bave pas dans Ia soupc).

'Les saules trcmpes, et des bourgeons sur lcs ronces

C'est Ia, dans une averse, qu'on s'abritc.

J'avais sept ans, elle etait plus petite.

EIIC etait toutc mouillce, je lui ai donne des primeveres.'

Lcs taches de son gilet montent au chiffre de trcntc-huit.

'Jc Ia chatouillais, pour la faire rire.

J'cprouvais un instant de puissance et de dclire.'

Mais alors, vieux lubriquc, a cct age . .

'Monsieur, le fait est dur.

II est venu, nous pcloter, un gros chien; Moi j'avais pour, je l'ai quittec a mi-chcmin.

C'est dommage.'

J\fais alors, tu as ton vautourl

Va t'en te decrotter les rides du visage; Ticns, rna fourchette, dccrassc-toi lc crane.

De que! droit paycs-tu des experiences comme moi?

Tiens, voila dix sous, pour Ia salle-de-bains.

Phlebas, le PhCnicien, pendant quinze jours noyc, Oubliait les cris des moucttes et Ia houlc de Cornouaille, Et les profits et les pertes, et Ia cargaison d'ctain: 43

Un courant de sous-mer l'emporta tres loin, Le repassant aux etapes de sa vie anb�rieure.

Figurez-vous done, c' etait un sort penible; Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.

44

Whispers of Immortality

\Vcbstcr was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin;

And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless glin.

DafTodil bulbs instead of halls

Stared from the sockets of the eyes!

He knew that thought dings round dead limbs Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another

\Vho 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 cffiuencc of cat;

Grishkin has a maisonnettc;

45

The sleek Brazilian jaguar

Does not in its aboreal 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.

Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service

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 To £v,

And at the mensual tum 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

47

Where the souls of the devout

Bum invisible and dim.

Along the garden-wall the bees

With hairy bellies pass between

The staminate and pistillate,

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.

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

Apcneck 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 horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog

Arc 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,

Reorganised 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 nee Rahinovitch

Tears at the grapes with murderous paws; 49

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 wistaria

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 siftings fall

To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

so

TH E WAS T E L A N D

I 9 2 2

'Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: "l:.l(jv"ll"lla rl lii"llm; respondebat ilia: a1To1Jav<iv lii"llw.'

For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro.

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cmcllest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

:\lemory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

\Vinter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersec

\Vith a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Ilofgarten, 10

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, starnm' aus Litauen, echt de11tsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,

�ly cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. J Ie said, .\larie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

J n the mountains, there you feel free.

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

\Vhat arc the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of 20
man,

You cannot �ay, 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, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only TI1erc 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 53

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch wellt der Wind

Der H eimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

W o weilest du?

'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' ttnd leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the \Vheel, 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.

54

Unreal City,

60

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.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, 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.

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

'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

70

'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?

'0 keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,

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

'You! hypocrite lecteurl-mon semblable,-mon frerel'

55

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass , Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 80

(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 90

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia, 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 The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100

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

\Vere told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffied on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

110

'�ly nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

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

'What arc you thinking of? What thinking? What?

'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley

\ Vhere the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'

The wind under the door.

'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'

Nothing again nothing.

1�0

'Do

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

'Nothing?'

I remember

Those arc pearls that were his eyes.

'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'

But

0 0 0 0 that Shakespeherian Hag

It's so elegant

So intelligent

130

'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'

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

'\Vith my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?

57

'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.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said-I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, 140

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.

150

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.) 160

The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.

ss

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 bot

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

170

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

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

59

III. 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.

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; 180

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 190

Musing upon the king my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death before him.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garr-et, Hattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.

But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

0 the moon shone bright on �Irs. Porter 6o

And on her daughter

200

They wash their feet in soda water

Et 0 ces voix d'enfants, chantant clans la coupole!

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc'd.

Tcrcu

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

�lr. Eugcnides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210

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 �lctropole.

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 Tircsias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can sec At the violet hour, the evening hour that stri\'cs 220

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Iler stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched hy the sun's last rays, On the divan arc piled (at night her hed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tircsias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest-

I too awaited the expected guest.

230

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 unrcproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240

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; 250

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

\Veil 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.

'This music crept by me upon the waters'

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

0 City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260

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 of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats

Oil and tar

The barges drift

With the turning tide

Red sails

270

Wide

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The barges wash

Drifting logs

Down Greenwich reach

Past the Isle of Dogs.

W eialala leia

W allala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars

280

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

290

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.'

'My feet are at l\1oorgate, 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.

300

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.'

la Ia

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

0 Lord Thou pluckest me out

0 Lord Thou pluckest

310
burning

IV. 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

0 you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320

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

V. vVhat the Thunder Said

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

\Ve who were living arc now dying

With a little patience

330

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains

\Vhich 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 3�0

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

66

And water

350

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

"'here the hermit-thrush 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?

360

\Vhen 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

�[urmur of maternal lamentation

\VI10 are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth 3i0

Ringed by the flat horizon only

\Vhat 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 380

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, 390

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

400

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment's surrender vVhich an age of pmdence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed

\Vhich is not to be found in our obituaries 68

Or in memories drapecl by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms

4 1 0

DA

Dayadlwam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

\Ve think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethercal rumours

Hevive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 420

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore

Fishing, 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 chc gli affirw

Quando fiarn ttfi chelidon-0 swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaille d Ia tour abolic 430

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

'Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih
shantih
shantih

6g

N O T E S O N ' T H E W A S T E L A N D '

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were sugg�sted by Miss Jessie L.

\Veston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, :tvliss 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.

I . T H E B U R I A L O F T H E D E A D

Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel II, i.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

3 1 . V. Tristan und Isohle, I, verses 5-8.

42. Id. III, verse 24.

46. 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 �Ierchant appear later; also the 'crowds of people', and Death by \Vater 70

is executed in Part IV. The �Ian with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

6o. Cf. Baudelaire:

'Fourmillante cite, cite pleine de rcves,

'Otl. le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.'

63. Cf. Inferno, III, 55-57 :

'si lunga tratta
di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n'avcsse disfatta.'

64. Cf. Inferno, IV, 25-27:

'Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,

'non avea pianto, rna' che di sospiri,

'che I' aura etema facevan tremare.'

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74· Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Flew·s clu l\1al.

I I . A G A �I E O F C H E S S

77· Cf. Antony and CleOJWlra, II, ii, I. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726:

dependent lychni laquemibus aurcis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.

99· V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, I. 204.

1 15. Cf. Part III, I. 195.

I I8. Cf. Webster: 'Is the wind in that door still?'

126. Cf. Part I, I. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in l'vliuuleton's Women beware

\Vomen.

I I I . T H E F I R E S E R M O N

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii.

196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

197· 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 . . '

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken : it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. 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.

218. 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 arc one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias.

\rVhat 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.'

Ilia negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti

Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.

Nam duo magnonun 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 hie igitur sumptus de lite iocosa Dicta lovis finnat; gravius Saturnia iusto Nee pro materia fertur doluisse suique Judicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte, At pater omnipotens (neqne enim licet inrita cuiquam Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, hut I had in mind the 'longshore' or 'dory' flshennan, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257· V. The Tempest, as above.

264. 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 Ch11rches: (P. S . .King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughtcrs begins here.

From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Gol/erdiimmerrmg, III, i : the Rhine-daughters.

279. V. Fronde, 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 Hobert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and 73

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.'

293· Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133:

'Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

'Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma.'

307. V. St. Augustine's Confessions: 'to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.'

308. The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the r..fount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. \Varren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

309. 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.

V . W H A T T il E T H U X D E R S A I D

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed : the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss \Veston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357· This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec Province. 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, hut in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they arc unequalled.' Its

'water-dripping song' is justly cclchratcd.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one 74

of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one o£

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.

367-77. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: 'Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest dcr halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wcge zum Chaos, fahrt betnmken im heiligem \Vahn am Abgrund entlang unci singt clazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Burger beleicligt, der Heilige und Seher hart sic mit Tranen.'

402. 'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathise, control).

The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanislwd, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sec/z;;;ig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

408. 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.'

412. Cf. Inferno, )C"'{XIII, 46:

'cd io scntii chiavar l'uscio di sotto all'orriblc 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 clements 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.'

425. V. \Veston : From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

428. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.

75

' "Ara vas prec per aquella valor

"que vas condus al sam de l'escalina,

"sovegna vas a temps de rna dolor."

Poi s' ascose nel foco che gli affina.'

429. V. Pervigilium Veneris. C£. Philomela in Parts II and III.

430. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

432. V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.

434· Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is our equivalent to this word.

TH E H O L L O W M E N

I 9 2 5

Mistah Kurtz-he dead.

The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless .

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death' s other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

79

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

?\fore distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

I I I

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

"" ln death's other kingdom Waking alone

At the hour when we are

So

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

I V

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

v

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

81

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way tliC world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

82

A S H-W E D N E S D A Y

I 9 3 0

I

Because I do not hope to tum again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to tum

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

\Vhy should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot d1ink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know tl1at time is always time And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice
ss

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And I pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain

Because I do not hope to tum again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

86

I I

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

In the hollow round of my skull. And God said Shall these bones live? shall these

Bones live? And that which had been contained In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping: Because of the goodness of this Lady

And because of her loveliness, and because She honours the Virgin in meditation,

\Ve shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my Jove To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

It is this which recovers

My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

\Vhich the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten And would be forgotten, so I would forget Thus devoted, concentrated in puqJose. And God said Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping With the burden of the grasshopper, saying Lady of silences

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulness

Exhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied

End of the endless

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other, Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand, Forgetting themselves and each other, united In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity Matters. This is the land. \Ve have our inheritance.

88

I l l

At the first hlrning of the second stair I turned and saw below

The same shape twisted on the banister Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair I left them twisting, turning below; There were no more faces and the stair was dark, Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,

Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair Was a slotted window bellied like the fig's fruit And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green Enchanted the maytime with an antique Bute.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair;

Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,

Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy

Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

8g

I V

Who walked between the violet and the violet Who walked between

The various ranks of varied green

Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour, Talking of trivial things

In ignorance and in knowledge of eternal dolour Who moved among the others as they walked, Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour, Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathed about her, folded.

The new years walk, restoring

Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem The time. Redeem

The unread vision in the higher dream While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue Between the yews, behind the garden god, go

Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down Redeem the time, redeem the dream

The token of the word unheard, unspoken Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew And after this our exile

9 1

v

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken

Word is unspoken, unheard;

Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.

0 my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence Not on the sea or on the islands, not On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land, For those who walk in darkness

Both in the day time and in the night time The right time and the right place are not here No place of grace for those who avoid the face No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for

Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between

Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

92

In dar1rness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose

0 my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender Yew trees pray for those who offend her And are terrified and cannot surrender And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks In the last desert between the last blue rocks The desert in the garden the garden in the desert Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

0 my people.

93

V I

Although I do not hope to tum again

Although I do not hope

Although I do not hope to tum

\Vavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things From the wide window towards the granite shore The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices And the weak spirit quickens to rebel For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell Quickens to recover

The cry of quail and the whirling plover And the blind eye creates

The empty forms between the ivory gates And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks

But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

94

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,

SuHer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

95

A R I E L P O E MS

Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather shmp,

The very dead of winter.'

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and gmmbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices : A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches,

·with the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

\Vet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,

\Vith a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky.

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

99

But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember, '

And I would do it again, but set down This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

100

A Song for Simeon

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season has made stand.

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

Dust in sunlight and memory in comers Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.

I have walked many years in this city, Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor, Have given and taken honour and ease.

There went never any rejected from my door.

Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children's children

\Vhen the time of sorrow is come?

They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home, Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation Grant us thy peace.

Before the stations of the mountain of desolation, Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow, Now at this birth season of decease, Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word, Grant Israel's consolation

To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word.

They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation 101

With glory and derision,

Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair.

Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer, Not for me the ultimate vision.

Grant me thy peace.

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,

Thine also).

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me, I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.

Let thy servant depart,

Having seen thy salvation.

102

Animula

'Issues from the hand of Cod, the simple soul'

To a :flat world of changing lights and noise, To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm; Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, Retreating to the corner of arm and knee, Eager to he reassured, taking pleasure In the fragrant hr:illiance of the Christmas tree, Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea; Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor And running stags around a silver tray; Confounds the actual and the fanciful, Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,

\Vhat the fairies do and what the servants say.

The heavy burden of the growing soul

Perplexes and offends more, day by day; Week by week, offends and perplexes more With the imperatives of 'is and seems'

And may and may not, desire and control.

The pain of living and the dmg of dreams Curl up the small soul in the window seat Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Issues from the hand of time the simple soul Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame, Unable to fare fonvard or retreat,

Fearing the warm reality, the offered good, Denying the importunity of the blood, Shadow of i ts own shadows, spectre in its own gloom, 103

Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room; Living first in the silence after the viaticum.

Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power, For Boudin, blown to pieces,

For this one who made a great fortune, And that one who went his own way.

Pray for Floret, by the boar hound slain between the yew trees, Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.

104

Marina

Quis hie locus, quae
regio, quae muncli plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow

And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog

What images return

0 my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning Death

Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning Death

Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning Death

Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning Death

Arc become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind, A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog By this grace dissolved in place

'What is this face, less clear and clearer The pulse in the ann, less strong and stronger-Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye

\Vhispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.

105

I made this, I have forgotten

And remember.

The rigging weak and the canvas rotten Between one June and another September.

Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.

The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.

This form, this face, this life

Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers

And woodthrush calling through the fog My daughter.

106

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

There are several attitudes towards Christmas, Some of which we may disregard :

The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), And the childish-which is not that of the child For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; So that the glittering rapture, the amazement Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree, So that the surprises, delight in new possessions (Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell), The expectation of the goose or turkey And the expected awe on its appearance, So that the reverence and the gaiety

May not be forgotten in later experience, In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium, The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure, Or in the piety of the convert

Which may be tainted with a self-conceit Displeasing to God and disrespectful to the children (And here I remember also with gratitude St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire) : So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas (By "eightieth" meaning whichever is the last) The accumulated memories of annual emotion May be concentrated into a great joy

Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion When fear came upon every soul:

Because the beginning shall remind us of the end And the first coming of the second coming.

108

U N F I N I S H E D P O E MS

Sweeney Agonistes

Fragments of an Aristoplwnic Melodrama Orestes : You don't sec them, you don't-but I see tTzcm: they arc hunting me dou:n, I must mot:c on.

CHOEPII0110I.

lienee the soul cannot be possessed of the dit:ine union, until it has dit:estccl itself of the lot:e of created beings.

ST. JOII� OF TilE CHOSS.

F R A G M E N T O F A P R O L O G U E

D U S T Y . D O R I S .

n u s T Y : Ilow about Pereira?

n o n I s :

\Vhat about Pereira?

I don't care.

n u s T Y :

You don't care!

Who pays the rent?

D o n I s :

Yes he pays the rent

D u s T Y : \Veil some men don't and some men do Some men don't and you know who

D o n I s : You can have Pereira
n u s T Y :

\\1hat about Pereira?

D o n I s : l ie's no gentleman, Pereira: You can't trust him!

D U S T Y :

\Veil that's true.

He's no gentleman if you can't trust him And if you can't trust him-Then you never know what he's going to do.

D o n I s : No it wouldn't do to be too nice to Pereira.

D u s T Y : Now Sam's a gentleman through and through.

D o n I s : I like Sam

1 1 1

D U S T Y :

I like Sam

Yes and Sam's a nice boy too.

He's a funny fellow

D O R I S :

He is a funny fellow

He's like a fellow once I knew. '

1-l e could make you laugh.

D U S T Y :

Sam can make you laugh:

Sam's all right

D O R I S :

But Pereira won't do.

We can't have Pereira

D U S T Y :

Well what you going to do?

T E L E P H O N E : Ting a ling ling Ting a ling ling

D U S T Y :

That's Pereira

D o R 1 s : Yes that's Pereira

D u s T Y :

Well what you going to do?

T E L E P H O N E : Ting a ling ling Ting a ling ling

D u s T Y :

That's Pereira

D o R I s : Well can't you stop that horrible noise?

Pick up the receiver
n u s T Y :

\Vhat'll I say!

D o R I s : Say what you like: say I'm ill, Say I broke my leg on the stairs

Say we've had a fire

D u s T Y :

Hello Hello are you there?

Yes this is Miss Dorrance's flat-

Oh Mr. Pereira is that you? how do you dol Oh I'm so sorry. I am so sorry

But Doris came home with a terrible chill No, just a chill

Oh I think it's only a chill

112

Yes indeed I hope so too-

\Vcll I hope we shan't have to call a doctor Doris just hates having a doctor

She says will you ring up on Monday

She hopes to be all right on Monday

I say do you mind if I ring off now

She's got her feet in mustard and water I said I'm giving her mustard and water All right, rvlonday you'll phone through.

Yes I'll tell her. Good bye. Goooood bye.

I'm sure, that's very kind of you.

Ah-h-h

D o R I s : Now I'm going to cut the cards for to-night.

Oh guess what the first is

D u s T Y :

First is. What is?

D O R I S : The King of Clubs

D u s T Y :

That's Pereira

D o H 1 s : It might be Sweeney

D u s T Y :

It's Pereira

D o R I s : It might fust as well be Sweeney D u s T Y : \Veil anyway it's very queer.

D o R 1 s : Here's the four of diamonds, what's that mean?

D u s T Y (reading) : 'A small sum of money, or a present Of wearing apparel, or a party'.

That's queer too.

D o I\ 1 s : Here's the three. \Vhat's that mean?

D u s T Y : 'News of an absent friend'.-Pereira!

D o 11 I s : The Queen of Heartsl-Mrs. Porter!

o u s T Y : Or it might be you

D O II I S :

Or it might be you

\Vc'rc all hearts. You can't be sure.

It just depends on what comes next.

1 13

You've got to think when you read the cards, It's not a thing that anyone can do.

D U S T Y : Yes I know you've a touch with the cards

\Vhat comes next?

D o R I s :

\Vhat comes next. It's the six.

D u s T Y : 'A quarrel. An estrangement .. Separation of friends'.

D o R 1 s : Here's the two of spades.

D u s T Y :

The two of spades!

THAT's THE CoFFIN! !

D O R I S :

Oh good heavens what'll I do?

Just before a party too!

D u s T Y : \Veil it needn't be yours, it may mean a friend.

D o R I s : No it's mine. I'm sure it's mine.

I dreamt of weddings all 1ast night.

Yes it's mine. I know it's mine.

Oh good heavens what'll I do.

\Veil I'm not going to draw any more, You cut for luck. You cut for luck.

It might break the spell. You cut for luck.

D u s T Y : The Knave of Spades.

D o R I s :

That'll be Snow

D u s T Y : Or it might be Swarts

D O R I S :

Or it might be Snow

D u s T Y : It's a funny thing how I draw court cards

D o R I s : There's a lot in the way you pick them up D u s T Y : There's an awful lot in the way you feel D o R I s : Sometimes they'll tell you nothing at all D u s T Y : You've got to know what you want to ask them D O R I S : You've got to know what you want to know D u s T Y : It's no use asking them too much D o R 1 s : It's no use asking more than once

D u s T Y : Sometimes they're no use at all.

D o R 1 s : I'd like to know about that coffin.

D U S T Y : Well I never! What did I tell you?

Wasn't I saying I always draw court cards?

The Knave of Hearts!

(Whistle outside of the wi1ulow.)

Well I never

What a coincidence! Cards are queer!

(Whistle again.)

D O R I S : Is that Sam?

D U S T Y : Of course it's Sam!

D o R I s : Of course, the Knave of Hearts is Sam!

D u s T Y ( leaning out of the window ) : Hello Sam!

w A u c 11 o P E :

Hello dear

How many's up there?

D U S T Y :

Nobody's up here

How many's down there?

w A u c II o P E :

Four of us here.

Wait till I put the car round the corner We'll be right up

D u s T Y : All right, come up.

D u s T Y (to D o n I s ) : Cards are queer.

D o R 1 s : I'd like to know about that coffin.

KKOCK KKOCK KKOCK

KKOCK KKOCK KNOCK

KNOCK

KNOCK

KNOCK

D O R I S .

D U S T Y . W A UC H O P E . H O R S F A L L .

K L I P S T E I N . K R U M P AC K E R .

w A u c H o P E : Hello Doris! Hello Dusty! How do you do!

How come? how come? will you permit mel think you girls both know Captain Horsfall

\Ve want you to meet two (riends of ours, American gentlemen here on business.

Meet Mr. Klipstein. Meet Mr. Krumpacker.

K L I P S T E I ;:o.; : How do you do K R U M P A C K E R :

How do you do

K L I P s T E I x : I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance K R u �� P A c K E R : Extremely pleased to become acquainted K L I P s T E I ;:-.; : Sam-I should say Loot Sam \Vauchope K R u �� P A c K E R : Of the Canadian Expeditionary Force

K L I P s T E I N : The Loot has told us a lot about you.

K R u ::-.r P A c K E R : \Ve were all in the war together Klip and me and the Cap and Sam.

K L I P s T E I :;:.; : Yes we did our bit, as you folks say, I'll tell the world we got the Hun on the run K R u �� P A c K E R : \Vhat about that poker game? eh what Sam?

\Vhat about that poker game in Bordeaux?

Yes Miss Dorrance you get Sam

To tell about that poker game in Bordeaux.

D u s T Y : Do you know London well, Mr. Krumpacker?

K L I P s T E I N : No we never been here before K R u �� P A c K E R : \Ve hit this town last night for the first time K L I P s T E I N : And I certainly hope it won't be the last time.

D O R I S : You like London, Mr. Klipstein?

K R u ::-.r P A c K E R : Do we like London? do we like London!

Do we like London! I Eh what Klip?

u6

K L I P s T E I N : Say, 1\Hss-er-uh-London's swell.

We like London fine.

K R u M P A c K E n :

Perfectly slick.

n u s T Y : Why don't you come and live here then?

K L I P S T E I ::>: : \Veil, no, i\Iiss-er-you haven't quite got it (I'm afraid I dicln't quite catch your name-But I'm very pleased to meet you all the same)

London's a little too gay for us

Yes I'll say a little too gay.

K R U M P A C K E R : Yes London's a little too gay for us Don't think I mean anything coarse-But I'm afraid we coulcln't stand the pace.

What about it Klip?

K L I P S T E I N :

You said it, Krum.

London's a slick place, London's a swell place, London's a fine place to come on a visit-K n u M P A c K E n : Specially when you got a real live Britisher A guy like Sam to show you around.

Sam of course is at home in Lonclon,

And he's promised to show us around.

117

F R A G M E N T O F A N A G O N

S W E E N E Y .

W A U C H O P E , H O R S F A L L . K L I P S T E I N .

K R U M P AC K E R , S W A R T S , S N O W . D O R I S , D U S T Y .

S W E E N E Y :

I'll carry you off

To a cannibal isle.

D O n i s : You'll be the cannibal!

S W E E N E Y : You'll be the missionary!

You11 be my little seven stone missionary!

I'll gobble you up. I'll be the cannibal.

D o R I s : You'll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?

s w E E N E Y : I'll be the cannibal.

D O R I S :

I'll be the missionary.

I'll convert you!

S W E E N E Y :

I'll convert you!

Into a stew.

A nice little, white little, missionary stew.

D o R I s : You wouldn't eat mel

S W E E N E Y :

Yes I'd eat you!

In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender little, Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.

You see this egg

You see this egg

Well that's life on a crocodile isle.

There's no telephones

There's no gramophones

There's no motor cars

No two-seaters, no six-seaters,

No Citroen, no Rolls-Royce.

118

Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.

Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way And the sea the other way,

Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.

Nothing at all but three things

D O R I S :

What things?

S W E E N E Y : Birth, and copulation, and death.

That's all, that's all, that's all, that's all, Birth, and copulation, and death.

D O R I S : I'd be bored.

S W E E N E Y :

You'd be bored.

Birth, and copulation, and death.

D O R I S : I'd be bored.

S W E E N E Y :

You'd be bored.

Birth, and copulation, and death.

That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: Birth, and copulation, and death.

I've been born, and once is enough.

You dont remember, but I remember,

Once is enough.

S O N G B Y W A U C H O P E AN D H O R S F A L L

S W A R T S A S T A M B O . S N O W A S B ON E S

Under the bamboo

Bamboo bamboo

Under the bamboo tree

Two live as one

One live as two

Two live as three

Under the bam
llg

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Where the breadfruit fall

And the penguin call ,

And the sound is the sound of the sea Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree

Where the Gauguin maids

In the banyan shades

Wear palm leaf drapery

Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Tell me in what part of the wood

Do you want to flbt with me?

Under the breadfruit, banyan, palmleaf Or under the bamboo tree?

Any old tree will do for me

Any old wood is ;ust as good

Any old isle is ;ust my style

Any fresh egg

Any fresh egg

And the sound of the coral sea.

D o R r s : I dont like eggs; I never liked eggs; And I dont like life on your crocodile isle.

120

S O N G D Y K L I P S T E I N A N D K R U M P AC K E R

S N O W A N D S W A R T S A S D E F O H E

My little island girl

My little island girl

I'm going to stay with you

And we won't worry tclwt to do

"' e tcon't haec to catch any trains Allll tee tcon't go home tclwn it rains We'll gather hibiscus flowers

For it tcon't be minutes but hours

For· it won't be hom·s but years

And the morning

And the evening

And noontime

And night
diminuendo Morning

Ecening

Noontime

Niglrt

D o n I s : That's not life, that's no life Why I' tl just as soon be dead.

S W E E ;-.; E Y : That's what life is. Just is D O R I S :

What is?

What's that life is?

S W E E ;-.; E Y ;

Life is death.

I knew a man once did a girl inn o n I s : Oh � [r. Sweeney, please dont talk, I cut the cards before you came

And I drew the coffin
s w A n T s :

You drew the coffin?

D o n I s : I drew the COFFIN very last card.

I dont care for such conversation

121

A woman runs a terrible risk.

s N o w : Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.

I assure you, Sir, we are very interested.

S W E E N E Y : I knew a man once did a girl in Any man might do a girl in

Any man has to, needs to, wants to

Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.

Well he kept her there in a bath

With a gallon of lysol in a bath
s w A R T s : These fellows always get pinched in the end.

s N o w : Excuse me, they dont all get pinched in the end.

What about them bones on Epsom Heath?

I seen that in the papers

You seen it in the papers

They dont all get pinched in the end.

D o R I s : A woman runs a terrible risk.

S N O W : Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.

s w E E N E Y : This one didn't get pinched in the end But that's another story too.

This went on for a couple of months

Nobody came

And nobody went

But he took in the milk and he paid the rent.

S W A R T S : What did he do?

All that time, what did he do?

S W E E N E Y : What did he dol what did he do?

That dont apply.

Talk to live men about what they do.

He used to come and see me sometimes
r d give him a drink and cheer him up.

D o R I s : Cheer him up?

D U S T Y :

Cheer him up?

122

s w E E N E Y : Well here again that dont apply But I've gotta use words when I talk to you.

But here's what I was going to say.

He didn't know if he was alive
and the girl was dead

He didn't know if the girl was alive
and he was dead

He didn't know if they both were alive or both were dead

If he was alive then the milkman wasn't and the rent-collector wasn't

And if they were alive then he was dead.

There wasn't any joint

There wasn't any joint

For when you're alone

\Vhen you're alone like he was alone

You're either or neither

I tell you again it dont apply

Death or life or life or death

Death is life and life is death

I gotta use words when I talk to you But if you understand or if you dont

That's nothing to me and nothing to you

\Ve all gotta do what we gotta do

\Ve're gona sit here and drink this booze

\Ve're gona sit here and have a tune

\Ve're gona stay and we're gona go

And somebody's gotta pay the rent

D O R I S :

I know who
s w E E N E Y : But that's nothing to me and nothing to you.

123

F U L L C H O R U S :

W A UC H O P E , H O R S F A L L ,

X L I P S T E I N , K R U M P AC K E R

When you're alone in the middle of the night and you wake in a sweat and a hell of a fright When you're alone in the middle of the bed and you wake like someone hit you in the head You've had a cream of a nig:&tmare dream and you've got the hoo-ha's coming to you.

Hoo hoo hoo

You dreamt you waked up at seven o'clock and it's foggy and it's damp and it's dawn and it's dark And you wait for a knock and the turning of a lock for you know the hangman's waiting for you.

And perhaps you're alive

And perhaps you're dead

Hoo ha ha

Hoo ha ha

Hoo

Hoo

Hoo

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

KNOCK

KNOCK

KNoCK

124

Coriolan

I . T R I U M P H A L M A R C I-l Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels Over the paving.

And the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.

How many? Count them. And such a press of people.

\Vc hardly J.mew ourselves that day, or knew the City.

This is the way to the temple, and we so many crowding the way.

So many waiting, how many waiting? what did it matter, on such a day?

Are they coming? 1\o, not yet. You can sec some eagles.

And hear the trumpets.

Here they come. Is he coming?

The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving.

\Ve can wait with our stools and our sausages.

What comes first? Can you see? Tell us. It is 5,8oo,ooo rifles and carbines,

102,000 machine guns,

28,ooo trench mortars,

53,000 field and heavy guns,

I cannot tell how many projectiles, mines and fuses, 13,000 aeroplanes,

24,000 aeroplane engines,

50,000 ammunition waggons,
now 55,000 army waggons,
u,ooo field kitchens,

1,150 field bakeries.

125

Wbat a time that took. Will it be he now? No, Those are the golf club Captains, these the Scouts, And now the societe gymnastique de Poissy And now come the Mayor and the Liverymen. Look There he is now, look:

There is no interrogation in his eyes '

Or in the hands, quiet over the horse's neck, And the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent.

0 hidden under the dove's wing, hidden in the turtle's breast, Under the palmtree at noon, under the running water At the still point of the turning world. 0 hidden.

Now they go up to the temple. Then the sacrifice.

Now come the virgins bearing urns, urns containing Dust

Dust

Dust of dust, and now

Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels Over the paving.

That is all we could see. But how many eagles! and how many trumpets!

(And Easter Day, we didn't get to the country, So we took young Cyril to church. And they rang a bell And he said right out loud, crumpets. ) Don't throw away that sausage,

Itll come in handy. He's artful. Please, will you Give us a light?

Light

Light

Et les soldats faisaient la haie? ILS LA FAISAIENT.

I I . D I F F I C U L T I E S O F A S T A T E S M A N

CRY what shall I cry?

All flesh is grass: comprehending

The Companions of the Bath, the Knights of the British Empire, the Cavaliers,

0 Cavaliers! of the Legion of Honour, The Order of the Black Eagle ( ISt and 2nd class), And the Order of the Rising Sun.

Cry cry what shall I cry?

The first thing to do is to form the committees: The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees.

One secretary will do for several committees.

What shall I cry?

Arthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator At a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual incre-ments of five shillings

To two pounds ten a week; with a bonus of thirty shillings at Christmas

And one week's leave a year.

A committee has been appointed to nominate a commission of engineers

To consider the Water Supply.

A commission is appointed

For Public Works, chiefly the question of rebuilding the fortifications.

A commission is appointed

To confer with a Volscian commission

About perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and smiths

127

Have appointed a joint committee to protest against the reduction of orders.

Meanwhile the guards shake dice on the marches And the frogs (0 Mantuan) croak in the marshes.

Fireflies flare against the faint sheet lightning What shall I cry?

Mother mother

Here is the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking remarkably Roman,

Remarkably like each other, lit up successively by the flare Of a sweaty torchbearer, yawning.

0 hidden under the . . . Hidden under the . . . \Vhere the dove's foot rested and locked for a moment, A still moment, repose of noon, set under the upper branches of noon's widest tree

Under the breast feather stirred by the small wind after noon There the cyclamen spreads its wings, there the clematis droops over the lintel

0 mother (not among these busts, all correctly inscribed) I a tired head among these heads

Necks strong to bear them

Noses strong to break the wind

Mother

May we not be some time, almost now, together, If the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations, Are now observed

May we not be

0 hidden

Hidden in the stillness of noon, in the silent croaking night.

Come with the sweep of the little bat's wing, with the small flare of the firefly or lightning bug, 128

'Rising and falling, crowned with dust', the small creatures, The small creatures chirp thinly through the dust, through the night.

0 mother

What shall I cry?

We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation

REsiGN

REsiGN

REsiGN

129

M I N O R P O E MS

Eyes that last I saw in tears

Eyes that last I saw in tears

Through division

Here in death's dream kingdom

The golden vision reappears

I see the eyes but not the tears

This is my afHiction

This is my affliction

Eyes I shall not see again

Eyes of decision

Eyes I shall not see unless

At the door of death's other kingdom

Where, as in this,

The eyes outlast a little while

A little while outlast the tears

And hold us in derision.

133

The wind sprang up at four o'clock

The wind sprang up at four o'clock

The wind sprang up and broke the bells Swinging between life and death

Here, in death's dream kingdom

The waking echo of confusing strife

Is it a dream or something else

When the surface of the blackened river Is a face that sweats with tears?

I saw across the blackened river

The camp fire shake with alien spears.

Here, across death's other river

The Tartar horsemen shake their spears.

134

Five-finger exercises

I . L I N E S T O A P E R S I A N C A T

The songsters of the air repair

To the green fields of Russell Square.

Beneath the trees there is no ease

For the dull brain, the sharp desires And the quick eyes of Woolly Bear.

There is no relief but in grief.

0 when will the creaking heart cease?

When will the broken chair give case?

Why will the summer day delay?

When will Time flow away?

I I . L I N E S T O A Y O R K S H I R E T E R R I E R

In a brown field stood a tree

And the tree was crookt and dry.

In a black sky, from a green cloud

Natural forces shriek'd aloud,

Screamed, rattled, muttered endlessly.

Little dog was safe and warm

Under a cretonne eiderdown,

Yet the field was cracked and brown

And the tree was cramped and dry.

Pollicle dogs and cats all must

Jellicle cats and dogs all must

Like undertakers, come to dust.

Here a little dog I pause

Heaving up my prior paws,

Pause, and sleep endlessly.

135

I I I . L I N E S T O A D U C K I N T H E P A R K

The long light shakes across the lake, The forces of the morning quake,

The dawn is slant across the lawn,

Here is no eft or mortal snake

But only sluggish duck and drake.

I have seen the morning shine,

I have had the Bread and Wine,

Let the feathered mortals take

That which is their mortal due,

Pinching bread and finger too,

Easier had than squirming worm;

For I know, and so should you

That soon the enquiring worm shall try Our well-preserved complacency.

I V . L I N E S T O

R A L P H H O D G S O N E S Q R E .

How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

(Everyone wants to know him)

With his musical sound

And his Baskerville Hound

\Vhich, just at a word from his master Will follow you faster and faster

And tear you limb from limb.

How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

Who is worshipped by all waitresses

(They regard him as something apart)

While on his palate fine he presses

The juice of the gooseberry tart.

How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

(Everyone wants to know him).

He has 999 canaries

And round his head finches and fairies In jubilant rapture skim.

How delightful to meet Mr. Hodgson!

(Everyone wants to meet him ) .

V . L I N E S F O R C U S C U S C A R A W A Y

A N D M I R Z A M U R A D A L I B E G

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

With his features of clerical cut,

And his brow so grim

And his mouth so prim

And his conversation, so nicely

Restricted to What Precisely

And If and Perhaps and But.

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

With a bobtail cur

In a coat of fur

And a porpentine cat

And a wopsical hat :

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

(Whether his mouth be open or shut).

137

Landscapes

I . N E W H A M P S H I R E

Children's voices in the orchard

Between the blossom- and the fruit-time: ·

Golden head, crimson head,

Between the green tip and the root.

Black wing, brown wing, hover over;

Twenty years and the spring is over;

To-day grieves, to-morrow grieves,

Cover me over, light-in-leaves;

Golden head, black wing,

Cling, swing,

Spring, sing,

Swing up into the apple-tree.

I I . V I R G I N I A

Red river, red river,

Slow flow heat is silence

No will is still as a river

Still. Will heat move

Only through the mocking-bird

Heard once? Still hills

Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,

White trees, wait, wait,

Delay, decay. Living, living,

Never moving. Ever moving

Iron thoughts came with me

And go with me:

Red river, river, river.

139

I I I . U S K

Do not suddenly break the branch, or

Hope to find

The white hart behind the white well.

Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell Old enchantments. Let them sleep.

'Gently dip, but not too deep',

Lift your eyes

Where the roads dip and where the roads rise Seek only there

Where the grey light meets the green air The hermit's chapel, the pilgrim's prayer.

140

I V . R A N N O C H , B Y G L E N C O E

Here the crow starves, here the patient stag Breeds for the rifle. Between the soft moor And the soft sky, scarcely room

To leap or soar. Substance crumbles, in the thin air Moon cold or moon hot. The road winds in Listlessness of ancient war,

Langour of broken steel,

Clamour of confused wrong, apt

In silence. Memory is strong

Beyond the bone. Pride snapped,

Shadow of pride is long, in the long pass No concurrence of bone.

V . C A P E A N N

0 quick quick quick, quick hear the song-sparrow, Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance Of the goldfinch at noon. Leave to chance The Blackburnian warbler, the shy one. Hail With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bob-white Dodging by bay-bush. Follow the feet

Of the walker, the water-thrush. Follow the flight Of the dancing arrow, the purple martin. Greet In silence the bullbat. All are delectable. Sweet sweet sweet But resign this land at the end, resign it To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull.

The palaver is finished.

Lines for an Old Man

The tiger in the tiger-pit

Is not more irritable than I.

The whipping tail is not more still

Than when I smell the enemy

Writhing in the essential blood

Or dangling from the friendly tree.

When I lay bare the tooth of wit

The hissing over the arched tongue

Is more affectionate than hate,

More bitter than the love of youth,

And inaccessible by the young.

Reflected from my golden eye

The dullard knows that he is mad.

Tell me if I am not glad!

143

C H O R U S E S F R O M

'T H E R O C K '

I 9 3 4

I

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

0 perpetual revolution of configured stars, 0 perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, 0 world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the vVord.

I I

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to G o D .

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

\Vhere is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

\Vhere is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty cen turies Bring us farther from G o D and nearer to the Dust.

I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,

\Vhere the Hiver flows, with foreign flotations.

There I was told : we have too many churches, And too few chop-houses. There I was told : Let the vicars retire. !\'fen do not need the Church In the place where they work, but where they spend their Sundays.

In the City, we need no bells :

Let them waken the suburbs.

I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told:

\Vc toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor 147

To Hindhead, or Maidenhead.

If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.

In industrial districts, there I was told Of economic laws.

In the pleasant countryside, there it seemed That the country now is only fit for picnics.

And the Church does not seem to be wanted In country or in suburb; and in the town Only for important weddings.

C H O R U S L E A D E R :

Silence! and preserve respectful distance.

For I perceive approaching

The Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.

The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.

He who has seen what has happened

And who sees what is to happen.

The Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.

The God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.

Enter the R O C K , led by a B O Y : T H E R O C K :

The lot of man is ceaseless labour, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder, Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.

I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know That it is hard to be really useful, resigning The things that men count for happiness, seeking The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting With equal face those that bring ignominy, The applause of all or the love of none.

All men are ready to invest their money But most expect dividends.

I say to you: Make perfect your will.

I say : take no thought of the harvest, But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes, But one thing does not change.

In all of my years, one thing docs not change.

However you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches; The men you arc in these times deride What has been done of good, you find explanations To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.

Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.

The desert is not remote in southern tropics, The desert is not only around the corner, The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you, The desert is in the heart of your brother.

The good man is the builder, if he build what is good.

I will show you the things that are now being done, And some of the things that were long ago done, That you may take heart. �lake perfect your will.

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

The lights fade; in the semi-darkness the voices of w o R K l\1 E N are heard clwnting.

In the vacant places

We will build with new bricks

There are lwruls and machines

149

And clay for new brick

And lime for new mortar

Where the bricks are fallen

We will build with new stone

'Where the beams arc rotten

We will build with new timbers

'Vherc the word is unspoken

We will build with new speech

There is work togctl�er

A Church for all

And a ;ob for each

Every man to his work.

Now a group of w o R K l\1 E N is silhouetted against the dim sky. From fmtlzer away, they arc answered by voices of the U N E l\1 P L 0 Y E D •

No man has hired us

With pocketed hands

And lowered faces

'Ve stand about in open places

And shir:er in unlit rooms.

Only the wind moves

Over empty fields, untilled

'Vhere the plough rests, at an angle To the furrow. In this land

There shall be one cigarette to two men, To two women one half pint of bitter

Ale. In this land

No man has hired us.

Our life is unwelcome, our death

Unmentioned in 'The Times'.

Chant of W O R K M E N again.

The river flows, the seasons turn

The sparrow and starling have no time to waste.

If men do not build

How shall they live?

When the -field is tilled

And the wheat is bread

They shall not die in a shortened bed And a narrow sheet. In this street There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end But noise without speech, food without taste.

Without delay, without haste

We would build the beginning and the end of this street.

We build the meaning:

A Church for all

And a ;ob for each

Each man to his work.

I I

Thus your fathers were made

Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of G o n , being built upon the foundation

Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.

But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?

Where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid deaths, embittered scorn in honeyless hives, And those who would build and restore hun out the palms of their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms to be more or the urn to be filled.

Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and wonder whether and how you may be buildcd together for a habitation of G o D in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved on the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a tortoise.

And some say: 'How can we love our neighbour? For love must be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have only our labour to give and our labour is not required.

We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can sing which nobody wants to hear sung; Waiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than dung'.

You, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?

Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men to G O D .

'Our citizenship is in Heaven'; yes, but that is the model and type for your citizenship upon earth.

When your fathers fixed the place of G o o , And settled all the inconvenient saints, Apostles, martyrs, in a kind of Whipsnade, Then they could set about imperial expansion Accompanied by industrial development.

Exporting iron, coal and cotton goods And intellectual enlightenment

And everything, including capital

And several versions of the Word of G o o : The British race assured of a mission Performed it, but left much at home unsure.

Of all that was done in the past, you cat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.

And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.

For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence : For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the \Vord of G o o , For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.

And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.

For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death, But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.

And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sin� of your fathers; And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without; For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity

153

The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.

What life have you if you have not life together?

There is no life that is not in community,, And no community not lived in praise of G o D .

I

Even the anchorite who meditates alone, For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of G o D , Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance, But all dash to and fro in motor cars, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

Nor does the family even· move about together, But every son would have his motor cycle, And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore; Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste; Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone, Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

154

I I I

The Word of the L O R D came unto me, saying: 0 miserable cities of designing men, 0 wretched generation of enlightened men, Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities, Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions : I have given you hands which you turn from worship, I have given you speech, for endless palaver, I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions, I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments, I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.

I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

Many are engaged in writing books and printing them, Many desire to see their names in print, Many read nothing but the race reports.

Much is your reading, but not the Word of G o o , Much is your building, but not the House of G o o .

Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing, To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

1 S T M A L E V O I C E :

A Cry from the East:

What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?

Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?

There shall be left the broken chimney, The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron, In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs, Where My Word is unspoken.

155

2 N D M A L E V O I C E :

A Cry from the North, from the West and from the South Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City; Where My Word is unspoken,

In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn r'evisit, The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court, And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand lost golf balls'.

C H O R U S :

We build in vain unless the L o R D build with us.

Can you keep the City that the L o R n keeps not with you?

A thousand policemen directing the traffic Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots Build better than they that build without the L o R D .

Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?

I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy sanctuary, I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes, Though you have shelters and institutions, Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid, Subsiding basements where the rat breeds Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors Or a house a little better than your neighbour's; When the Stranger says : 'What is the meaning of this city?

Do you huddle close together because you love each other?'

What will you answer? 'We all dwell together To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?

And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.

0 my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger, Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

0 weariness of men who tum from c o o To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action, To arts and inventions and daring enterprises, To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited, Binding the earth and the water to your service, Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains, Dividing the stars into common and preferred, Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator, Engaged in working out a rational morality, Engaged in printing as many books as possible, Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles, Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm For nation or race or what you call humanity; Though you forget the way to the Temple, There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

You shall not deny the Stranger.

157

I V

There are those who would build the Temple, And those who prefer that the Temple should not be built.

In the days of Nehemiah the Prophet .

There was no exception to the general rule.

In Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan, He served the wine to the king Artaxerxes, And he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem; And the King gave him leave to depart That he might rebuild the city.

So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem, And there, by the dragon's well, by the dung gate, By the fountain gate, by the king's pool, Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire; No place for a beast to pass.

There were enemies without to destroy him, And spies and self-seekers within,

When he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the walL

So they built as men must build

With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

v

0 Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian : were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain : and from the friend who has something to lose.

Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: 'The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.'

Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten : are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sunlight.

And the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing and barking: they say, 'This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it,

And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the Christians.' And these are not justified, nor the others.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.

The man who has builded during the day would return to his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and doze before he sleeps.

But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs : therefore some must labour, and others must hold the spears.

159

V I

It is hard for those who have never known persecution, And who have never lmown a Christian, To believe these tales of Christian persecution.

It is hard for those who live near a Bank To doubt the security of their money.

It is hard for those who live near a Police Station To believe in the triumph of violence.

Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World And that lions no longer need keepers?

Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?

Do you need to be told that even such modest attain-ments

As you can boast in the way of polite society Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance?

Men! polish your teeth on rising and retiring; Women! polish your fingernails :

You polish the tooth of the dog and the talon of the cat.

Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?

She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.

She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.

She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.

They constantly try to escape

From the darkness outside and within

By dreaming of systems so pedect that no one will need to be good.

But the man that is will shadow

The man that pretends to be.

And the Son of Man was not crucified once for all, I6o

The blood of the martyrs not shed once for all, The lives of the Saints not given once for all: But the Son of Man is crucified always And there shall be Martyrs and Saints.

And if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps We must first build the steps;

And if the Temple is to be cast down

We must first build the Temple.

V I I

In the beginning c o o created the world. Waste and void.

Waste and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And when there were men, in their va;ious ways, they struggled in torment towards G o D

Blindly and vainly, for man is a vain thing, and man without c o D is a seed upon the wind: driven this way and that, and finding no place of lodgement and germination.

They followed the light and the shadow, and the light led them forward to light and the shadow led them to darkness,

Worshipping snakes or trees, worshipping devils rather than nothing: crying for life beyond life, for ecstasy not of the flesh.

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

And the Spirit moved upon the face of the water.

And men who turned towards the light and were known of the light

Invented the Higher Religions; and the Higher Religions were good

And led men from light to light, to knowledge of Good and Evil.

But their light was ever surrounded and shot with darkness As the air of temperate seas is pierced by the still dead breath of the Arctic Current;

And they came to an end, a dead end stirred with a flicker of life,

And they came to the withered ancient look of a child that has died of starvation.

Prayer wheels, worship of the dead, denial of this world, affirmation of rites with forgotten meanings In the restless wind-whipped sand, or the hills where the wind will not let the snow rest.

\Vaste and void. \Vaste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,

A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,

Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;

Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before, Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light; Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or. where.

Men have left G o n not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before

That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,

And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do

But stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards In an age which advances progressively backwards?

V O I C E O F T H E U N E �I P L O Y E D (afar off) : In this land

There shall be one cigarette to two men, To two women one half pint of bitter

Ale.

C H O R U S :

What does the world say, does the whole world stray in high-powered cars on a by-pass way?

V O I C E O F T H E U N E �I P L O Y E D (more faintly): In this la11d

No man has hired us.

C H O R U S :

·waste and void. \Vaste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?

\Vhen the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed, and men have forgotten

All gods except Usury, Lust and Power.

V I I I

0 Father we welcome your words,

And we will take heart for the future, Remembering the past.

The heathen are come into thine inheritance, And thy temple have they defiled.

Who is this that cometh from Edom?

He has trodden the wine-press alone.

There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem And the holy places defiled;

Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.

And among his hearers were a few good men, Many who were evil,

And most who were neither.

Like all men in all places,

Some went from love of glory,

Some went who were restless and curious, Some were rapacious and lustful.

Many left their bodies to the kites of Syria Or sea-strewn along the routes;
l\Iany left their souls in Syria,

Living on, sunken in moral corruption; Many came back well broken,

Diseased and beggared, finding

A stranger at the door in possession : Came home cracked by the sun of the East

And the seven deadly sins in Syria.

But our King did well at Acre.

And in spite of all the dishonour,

The broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more' than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.

Only the faith could have done what was good of it; Whole faith of a few,

Part faith of many.

Not avarice, lechery, treachery,

Envy, sloth, gluttony, jealousy, pride: It was not these that made the Crusades, But these that unmade them.

Remember the faith that took men from home At the call of a wandering preacher.

Our age is_ an age of moderate virtue And of moderate vice

When men will not lay down the Cross

Because they will never assume it.

Yet nothing is impossible, nothing,

To men of faith and conviction.

Let us therefore make perfect our will.

0 G 0 D , help US.

166

I X

Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine cars

And set thine heart upon all that I show thee.

Who is this that has said: the House of G o D is a House of Sorrow;

We must walk in black and go sadly, with longdrawn faces, We must go between empty walls, quavering lowly, whispering faintly,

Among a few flickering scattered lights?

They would put upon G o D their own sorrow, the grief they should feel

For their sins and faults as they go about their daily occasions.

Yet they walk in the street proudnecked, like thoroughbreds ready for races,

Adorning themselves, and busy in the market, the forum, And all other secular meetings.

Thinking good of themselves, ready for any festivity, Doing themselves very well.

Let us mourn in a private chamber, learning the way of penitence,

And then let us learn the joyful communion of saints.

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Out of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,

Spring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that is joined to the soul of stone;

Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless

Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.

Out of the sea of sound the life of music, Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,

Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,

There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

L o R D , shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?

Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers For life, for dignity, grace and order, And intellectual pleasures of the senses?

The L o R D who created must wish us to create And employ our creation again in His service Which is already His service in creating.

For Man is joined spirit and body,

And therefore must serve as spirit and body.

Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in Man; Visible and invisible must meet in His Temple; You must not deny the body.

Now you shall see the Temple completed: After much striving, after many obstacles; For the work of creation is never without travail; The formed stone, the visible crucifix, The dressed altar, the lifting light, Light

Light

The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

168

X

You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned By one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to c o D .

It is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill In a world confused and dark and disturbed by portents of fear.

And what shall we say of the future? Is one church all we can build?

Or shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?

The great snake lies ever half awake, at the bottom of the pit of the world, curled

In folds of himself until he awakens in hunger and moving his head to right and to left prepares for his hour to devour.

But the l\1ystery of Iniquity is a pit too deep for mortal eyes to plumb. Come

Ye out from among those who prize the serpent's golden eyes,

The worshippers, self-given sacrifice of the snake. Take Your way and be ye separate.

Be not too curious of Good and Evil; Seek not to count the future waves of Time; But be ye satisfied that you have light Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

0 Light Invisible, we praise Theel

Too bright for mortal vision.

0 Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; The eastern light OW' spires touch at morning, 16g

The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl ancl moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.

0 Light Invisible, we worship Theel

We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled, The light of altar and of sanctuary;

Small lights of those who meditate at midnight And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows

And light reflected from the polished stone, The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.

Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.

We see the light but see not whence it comes.

0 Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.

We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.

\Ve tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,

Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.

And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;

Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.

170

Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.

We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

0 Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!

F O U R Q U A R T E 1� S

Burnt Norton
roii M")'ov o'lovros �uvoii rwou<Ttl' ol 7rO��ol w� lO[av ExovTES ,Pp611TJCfLV.

I. p. 77· Fr. 2.

OOOS livw KclTW p.la. Ka.l wur>i.

I. p. 8g. Fr. 6o.

Diels: Die Fragmeutc der Vorsokratike� ( Herakleitos) I

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

\Vhat might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

\Vhat might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. l'vly �vords echo Thus, in your mind.

But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.

Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, Round the comer. Through the first gate, 175

Into our first world, shall we follow The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible, Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves, In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

·

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the slrmbbery, And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, Along the empty alley, into the box circle, To look down into the drained pool.

Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they werP. behind us, reflected in the pool.

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

Co, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Co, go, go, said the bird : human kind Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

I I

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

\Ve move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. t\either flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

\Vhere past and future are gathered. i'\either movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been : but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, 177

Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror.

Yet the enchainment of past and future Woven in the weakness of the changing body, Protects mankind from heaven and damnation Which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future

Allow but a little consciousness.

To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

I I I

Here is a place of disaffection

Time before and time after

In a dim light: neither daylight

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

With slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul

Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal.

Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a Bicker Over the strained time-ridden faces

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration

Men and hits of paper, whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time,

\Vind in and out of unwholesome lungs Time before and time after.

Eructation of unhealthy souls

Into the faded air, the torpid

Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only

Into the world of perpetual solitude,

·world not world, but that which is not world, Internal darkness, deprivation

And destitution of all property,

Desiccation of the world of sense,

Evacuation of the world of fancy,

Inoperancy of the world of spirit;

This is the one way, and the other

Is the same, not in movement

But abstention from movement; while the world moves In appetency, on its metalled ways

Of time past and time future.

IV

Time ami the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away.

\Vill the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis 179

Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling?

Chill

Fingers of yew be curled

Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.

v

\Vords move, music moves

Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach

The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness.

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence,

Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end.

And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. The \Vord in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation, The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

180

The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs.

Desire itself is movement

Not in itself desirable;

Love is itself unmoving,

Only the cause and end of movement,

Timeless, and undesiring

Except in the aspect of time

Caught in the form of limitation

Between un-being and being.

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

East Coker

I

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,

\�here you lean against a bank while a van passes, A.nd the deep lane insists on the direction Into the village, in the electric heat Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.

The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.

Wait for the early owl.

In that open field

If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music

Of the weak pipe and the little drum

And see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman

In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie-

A dignified and commodious sacrament.

Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Holding eche other by the hand or the arm

\Vhiche betokeneth concorde. Hound and round the fire Leaping through the Hames, or joined in circles, H.ustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,

Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth Mirth of those long since under earth Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Dawn points, and another day

Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind

\Vrinkles and slides. I am here

Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

l i

What is the late November doing

With the disturbance of the spring

And creatures of the summer heat,

And snowdrops writhing under feet

And hollyhocks that aim too high

Red into grey and tumble down

Late roses filled with early snow?

Thunder rolled by the rolling stars

Simulates triumphal cars

Deployed in constellated wars

Scorpion fights against the Sun

Until the Sun and Moon go down

Cornets weep and Leonids fly

Hunt the heavens and the plains

Whirled in a vortex that shall bring

The world to that destructive fire

Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

That was a way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle

\Vith words and meanings. The poetry does not matter It was not (to start again) what one had expected.

\Vhat was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us, Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,

The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they htmed their eyes. There is, it seems to us,

At best, only a limited value

In the knowledge derived from experience.

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. \Ve are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

In the middle, not only in the middle of the way But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble, On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold, And menaced by monsters, fancy lights, Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The houses arc all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.

I I I

0 clark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,

The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors, And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

\Vith a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing fac;ade are all being rolled away

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-

! said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and love and the hope are all in the waiting.

\Vait without thought, for you are not ready for thought : So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

186

\Vhisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you arc not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.

I V

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam's curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined mi11ionaire,

Wherein, if we do we11, we shaH

Die of the absolute paternal care

That wi11 not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chi11 ascends from feet to knees, The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food :

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood

Again, in spite of that, we ca11 this Friday good.

v

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres

Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a who11y new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which 188

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

\Vith shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate-but there is no competition-There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again : and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. 1\ot the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot he deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

\Vhen here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here and there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

189

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

190

The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois saurages-is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the �.E. coast of Cape Ann, !\lassachusctts. Salt:ages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy. ) I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities-ever, however, implacable, Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonourcd, unpropitiatcd By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom, In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard, In the smell of grapes on the autumn table, And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also, the granite Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses Its hints of earlier and other creation : The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone; The pools where it offers to our curiosity The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices, Many gods and many voices.

The salt is on the briar rose,

The fog is in the fir trees.

The sea howl

And the sea yelp, arc different voices Often together heard: the whine in the rigging, The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water, The distant rote in the granite teeth, And the wailing warning from the approaching headland Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner Rounded homewards, and the seagull :

And under the oppression of the silent fog The tolling bell

Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried Ground swell, a time

Older than the time of chronometers, older Than time counted by anxious worried women Lying awake, calculating the future,

Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel

And piece together the past and the future, Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, The future futureless, before the morning watch When time stops and time is never ending; And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning, Clangs

The bell.

192

I I

\Vhere is there an end of it, the soundless wailing, The silent withering of autumn flowers Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;

\Vhere is there an end to the drifting wreckage, The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing Consequence of further days and hours,

\Vhile emotion takes to itself the emotionless Years of living among the breakage

Of what was believed in as the most reliable

And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing Pride or resentment at failing powers, The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless, In a drifting boat with a slow leakage, The silent listening to the undeniable Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

\\'here is the end of them, the fishermen sailing Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?

\\' e cannot think of a time that is oceanless Or of an ocean not littered with wastage Or of a future that is not liable

Like the past, to have no destination.

We l.:we to think of them as forever bailing, Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers 193

Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage; Not as making a trip that will be unpayable For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless walling, No end to the withering of withered flowers, To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless, To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage, The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable

Prayer of the one Annunciation.

It seems, as one becomes older,

That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence-Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,

\Vhich becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.

The moments of happiness-not the sense of well-being, Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination

\Ve had the experience but missed the meaning, And approach to the meaning restores the experience In a different form, beyond any meaning

\Ve can assign to happiness. I have said before That the past experience revived in the meaning Is not the experience of one life only But of many generations-not forgetting Something that is probably quite ineffable: 194

The backward look behind the assurance Of recorded history, the backward half-look Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony (Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding, Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,

Is not in question) are likewise permanent

\Vith such permanence as time has. \Ve appreciate this better

In the agony of others, nearly experienced, Involving ourselves, than in our own.

For our own past is covered by the currents of action, But the tom1ent of others remains an experience Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.

Time the destroyer is time the preserver, Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,

The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,

\Vavcs wash over it, fogs conceal it; On a halcyon day it is merely a monument, In navigable weather it is always a seamark To lay a comse by: hut in the sombre season Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

I I I

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant

Among other things-or one way of putting the same thing: 195

That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray

Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret, Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.

And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.

You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure, That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.

\Vhcn the train starts, and the passengers are settled To fruit, periodicals and business letters (And those who saw them off have left the platform) Their faces relax from grief into relief, To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past Into different lives, or into any future; You arc not the same people who left that station Or who will arrive at any terminus,

While the narrowing rails slide together behind you; And on the deck of the drumming liner

\Vatching the furrow that widens behind you, You shall not think 'the past is finished'

Or 'the future is before us'.

At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial, Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear, The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)

'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging; You arc not those who saw the harbour Receding, or those who will disembark.

Here between the hither and the farther shore

\Vhile time is withurawn, consiuer the future

And the past with an equal mind.

At the moment which is not of action or inaction You can receive this : "on whatever sphere of being The mind of a man may be intent

At the time of death"-that is the one action (And the time of ueath is every moment) Which shall fructify in the lives of others : And do not think of the fruit of action.

Fare forward.

0 voyagers, 0 seamen,

You who come to port, and you whose bodies Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea, Or whatever event, this is your real destination: So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna On the field of battle.

Not fare well,

But fare forward, voyagers.

I V

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory, Pray for all those who are in ships, those

\Vhose business has to do with fish, and Those concerned with every lawful traffic And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of

\Vomen who have seen their sons or husbands Setting forth, and not returning:

Figlia del tuo figlio,

Queen of Heaven.

197

Also pray for those who were in ships, and Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips Or in the dark throat which will not reject them Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's Perpetual angelus.

v

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits, To report the behaviour of the sea monster, Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry, Observe disease in signatures, evoke

Biography from the wrinkles of the palm And tragedy from fingers; release omens By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams Or barbituric acids, or dissect

The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors-To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual

Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press: And always will be, some of them especially When there is distress of nations and perplexity Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.

Men's curiosity searches past and future And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless

\Vith time, is an occupation for the saint-No occupation either, but something given And taken, in a lifetime's death in love, Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.

For most of us, there is only the unattended Ig8

Moment, the moment in and out of time, The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you arc the music

\Vhile the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarna-tion.

Here the impossible union

Of spheres of existence is actual,

Here the past and future

Arc conquered, and reconciled,

"'here action were otherwise movement Of that which is only moved

And has in it no source of movement

Driven by d::cmonic, chthonic

Powers. And right action is freedom

From past and future also.

For most of us, this is the aim

Never here to be realised;

Who are only undefeated

Because we have gone on trying;

\Vc, content at the last

If our temporal reversion nourish

(Not too far from the yew-tree)

The life of significant soil.

199

Little Gidding

I
l\Hdwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the icc, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart's heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier, ·

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom Of snow, a bloom more sudden

Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading, Not in the scheme of generation.

"7hcre is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?

If you came this way,

Taking the route you would be likely to take From the place you would be likely to come from, If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges

\Vhite again, in :\lay, with voluptuary sweetness.

It would be the same at the end of the journey, 200

If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And tum behind the pig-sty to the dull fac;ade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From "·hich the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places

\Vhich also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws, Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-But this is the nearest, in place and time, Now and in England.

If you came this way,

Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You arc here to kneel

\Vhcrc prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation Of the praying mimi, or the sound of the voice praying.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Here, the intersection of the timeless moment Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

201

I I

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house-

The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth.

\Vater and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

\Vater and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

\Vater and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending

202

After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin Over the asphalt where no other sound was Between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking, loitering and hurried As if blown towards me like the metal leaves Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.

And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable.

So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: '\Vhat! are you here?'

Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other-And he a face still forming; yet the \H>rds sufficed To compel the recognition they preceded.

And so, compliant to the common wind, Too strange to each other for misunderstanding, In concord at this intersection time Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,

\Ve trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said : 'The wonder that I feel is easy, Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak: I may not comprehend, may not remember.'

And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse

203

My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.

These things have served their purpose : let them be.

So with your own, and pray they be forgiven By others, as I pray you to forgive Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

But, as the passage now presents no hindrance To the spirit unappeased and peregrine Between two worlds become much like each other, So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration

Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm

\Vhich once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

\Vhere you must move in measure, like a dancer."

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street He left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded on the blowing of the horn.

I I I

There are three conditions which often look alike Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

\Vhich resembles the others as death resembles life, Being between two lives-unflowering, between The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory: For liberation-not less of love but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country Begins as attachment to our own field of action And comes to find that action of little importance Though never indifferent. History may he servitude, History may he freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but

205

All shall be well, and

All manner of thing shall be well.

If I think, again, of this place,

And of people, not wholly commendable, Of no immediate kin or kindness,

But some of peculiar genius,

All touched by a common genius,

United in the strife which divided them; If I think of a king at nightfall,

Of three men, and more, on the scaffold And a few who died forgotten

In other places, here and abroad,

And of one who died blind and quiet,

Why should we celebrate

These dead men more than the dying?

It is not to ring the bell backward

Nor is it an incantation

To summon the spectre of a Rose.

\Ve cannot revive old factions

\Ve cannot restore old policies

Or follow an antique drum.

These men, and those who opposed them And those whom they opposed

Accept the constitution of silence

And are folded in a single party.

\Vhatever we inherit from the fortunate

\Ve have taken from the defeated

What they had to leave us-a symbol:

A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

206

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

I V

The dove descending breaks the air

\Vith flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

\Vho then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

\Vhich human power cannot remove.

\Ve only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

v

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, 207

The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-.tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

\Ve shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring

·wm be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the ch�ldren in the apple-tree
zo8

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always-

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

209

O C C A S I O N A L V E R S E S

Defense of the Islands

Defense of the islands cannot pretend to be verse, but its date-just after the evacuation from Dunkirk-and occasion have for me a significance which makes me wish to preserve it. :\lcKnight Kauffer was then working for the ;\linistry of Information. At his request I wrote these lines to accompany an exhibition in l\'ew York of photographs illustrating the war effort of Britain. They were subsequently published in Britain at War (the :\luseum of :\lodem Art, Xew York, 1941 ). I now dedicate them to the memory of Edward :\lcKnight Kauffer.

Let these memorials of built stone-music's enduring instrument, of many centuries of patient cultivation of the earth, of English verse
be joined with the memory of this defense of the islands
and the memory of those appointed to the grey ships-battleship, merchantman, trawlercontributing their share to the ages' pavement of British bone on the sea floor
and of those who, in man's newest form of gamble with death, fight the power of darkness in air and fire
and of those who have followed their forebears to Flanders and France, those undefeated in defeat, unalterable in triumph, changing nothing of their ancestors' ways but the weapons 213

and those again for whom the paths of glory are the lanes and the streets of Britain : to say, to the past and the future generations of our kin and of our speech, that we took up our positions, in obedience to instructions.

A Note on War Poetry

A Note on lVar Poetry was written at the request of Miss Stonn Jameson, to be included in a book entitled London Calling (Halper Brothers, New York, 1942), Not the expression of collective emotion Imperfectly reflected in the daily papers.

Where is the point at which the merely individual Explosion breaks

In the path of an action merely typical To create the universal, originate a symbol Out of the impact? This is a meeting

On which we attend

Of forces beyond control by experiment-Of Nature and the Spirit. lVIostly the individual Experience is too large, or too small. Our emotions Aie only 'incidents'

In the effort to keep day and night together.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen To a very young man: but a poem is not poetry

That is a life.

\Var is not a life: it is a situation, One which may neither be ignored nor accepted, A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem, Enveloped or scattered.

215

The enduring is not a substitute for the transient, Neither one for the other. But the abstract conception Of private experience at its greatest intensity Becoming universal, which we call 'poetry', May be affirmed in verse.

216

To the Indians Who Died in Africa To tf1e Indians 'Vho Died in Africa was written at the requC'st of :\!iss Cornelia Sorabji for Queen Mary's Book for l11dia (Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1943). I dedicate it now to Bonamy Dobree, because he liked it and urged me to preserve it.

A man's destination is his own village, His own fire, and his wife's cooking; To sit in front of his own door at sunset And see his grandson, and his neighbour's grandson Playing in the dust together.

Scarred but secure, he has many memories

\Vhich return at the hour of conversation, (The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate) Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places, Foreign to each other.

A man's destination is not his destiny, Every country is home to one man

And exile to another. \\'here a man dies bravely At one with his destiny, that soil is his.

Let his village remember.

This was not your land, or ours : but a village in the Midlands,

And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.

Let those who go home tell the same story of you: Of action with a common purpose, action None the less fruitful if neither you nor we Know, until the moment after death,

What is the fruit of action.

217

To Walter de la Mare

To \Valter de la Mare was written for inclusion in Tribute to Walter de Ia Mare (Faber & Faher Ltd., 1948), a book presented to him on his seventy-fifth birthday.

The children who explored the brook and found A desert island with a sandy cove

(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground, For here the water buffalo may rove,

The kinkajou, the mangabey, abound

In the dark jungle of a mango grove,

And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree

The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove ) Recount their exploits at the nursery tea And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be, At not quite time for bed? . . .

Or when the lawn

Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn, The sad intangible who grieve and yearn;

"'hen the familiar scene is suddenly strange Or the well known is what we have yet to learn, And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change;

'When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance, Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range At witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts; 219

When the nocturnal traveller can arouse No sleeper by his call; or when by chance An empty face peers from an empty house; By whom, and by what means, was this designed?

The whispered incantation which allows.

Free passage to the phantoms of the mind?

By you; by those deceptive cadences

Wherewith the common measure is refined; By conscious art practised with natural ease; By the delicate, invisible web you wove

The inexplicable mystery of solllld.

220

A Dedication to My Wife

To whom I owe the leaping delight

That quickens my senses in our wakingtime And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime, The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill

No sullen tropic sun shall wither

The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only But this dedication is for others to read : These are private words addressed to you in public.

221

Document Outline

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
CONTENTS

Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

- The Love Song of ]. Alfred Prufrock
- Portrait of a Lady
- Preludes
- Rhapsody on a Windy Night
- Morning at the Window
- The Boston Evening Transcript
- Aunt Helen
- Cousin Nancy
- Mr. Apollinax
- Hysteria
- Conversation Galante
- La Figlia che Piange

Poems (1920)

- Gerontion

- Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar

- Sweeney Erect
- A Cooking Egg
- Le Directeur
- Mélange Adultère de Tout
- Lune de Miel
- The Hippopotamus
- Dans le Restaurant
- Whispers of Immortality
- Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
- Sweeney Among the Nightingales

The Waste Land (1922)

- I. The Burial of the Dead
- II. A Game of Chess
- III. The Fire Sermon
- IV. Death by Water
- V. What the Thunder Said
- Notes on "The Waste Land"

The Hollow Men (1925)

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI

Ariel Poems

- Journey of the Magi
- A Song for Simeon
- Animula
- Marina
- The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

Unfinished Poems

- Sweeney Agonistes

- Coriolan

Minor Poems

- Eyes that last I saw in tears
- The wind sprang up at four o'clock
- Five-finger exercises
- Landscapes
- Lines for an Old Man

Choruses from "The Rock" (1934)

- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- VIII
- IX
- X

Four Quartets

- Burnt Norton
- East Coker
- The Dry Salvages
- Little Gidding

Occasional Verses

- Defense of the Islands
- A Note on War Poetry
- To the Indians Who Died in Africa
- To Walter de la Mare
- A Dedication to My Wife

Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
CONTENTS

Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

- The Love Song of ]. Alfred Prufrock
- Portrait of a Lady
- Preludes
- Rhapsody on a Windy Night
- Morning at the Window
- The Boston Evening Transcript
- Aunt Helen
- Cousin Nancy
- Mr. Apollinax
- Hysteria
- Conversation Galante
- La Figlia che Piange

Poems (1920)

- Gerontion

- Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar

- Sweeney Erect
- A Cooking Egg
- Le Directeur
- Mélange Adultère de Tout
- Lune de Miel
- The Hippopotamus
- Dans le Restaurant
- Whispers of Immortality
- Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
- Sweeney Among the Nightingales

The Waste Land (1922)

- I. The Burial of the Dead
- II. A Game of Chess
- III. The Fire Sermon
- IV. Death by Water
- V. What the Thunder Said
- Notes on "The Waste Land"

The Hollow Men (1925)

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI

Ariel Poems

- Journey of the Magi
- A Song for Simeon
- Animula
- Marina
- The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

Unfinished Poems

- Sweeney Agonistes

- Coriolan

Minor Poems

- Eyes that last I saw in tears
- The wind sprang up at four o'clock
- Five-finger exercises
- Landscapes
- Lines for an Old Man

Choruses from "The Rock" (1934)

- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- VIII
- IX
- X

Four Quartets

- Burnt Norton
- East Coker
- The Dry Salvages
- Little Gidding

Occasional Verses

- Defense of the Islands
- A Note on War Poetry
- To the Indians Who Died in Africa
- To Walter de la Mare
- A Dedication to My Wife