Thomas Stearns Eliot

The Waste Land
"NAM Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum ili pueri dicerent: .....; respondebat illa: ......"

["For I have with my own eyes seen the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, 'Sibyl, what is it that you want?' she replied, 'I want to die.'" Petronius, Satyricon, Cap. 48.]

For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro
[Ezra Pound [1885- ], American poet who influenced Eliot's early work. "The better workman."]

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starn
bergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the
colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hof
garten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen,
echt deutsch
And when we were children, staying at the
archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in
the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches
grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun
beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket
no relief,
And the day stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
[Come in under the shadow of this red rock].
And I will show you something different from
either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind
Der heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
- Yet when we came back, late, from the
Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant,
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 Lad of the Rocks,
The lad of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here
the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this
card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his
back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a
ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
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 Wolnoth 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!
"That corpse you planted last year in your
garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this
year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable,
-mon fr¶re!:

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
[Another hid his eyes behind his wing]
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched can-
delabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic
perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled,
confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by
the air
That freshened from the window, these
ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
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 carv¶d 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
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears,
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room
enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the rush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely
still.

"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay
with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak.
Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking?
What?
"I never know what you are thinking.
Think."

I think we are in rats' alley
Where 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.

"Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing?
Do you remember
"Nothing?"
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in
your head?"

O O O O That Shakespearean Rag -
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
"I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
"With my hair down, so. What shall we do
tomorrow?
"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,
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, LiIl, and get a nice
set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor
Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a
good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others
will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o'that, I
said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and
give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I
said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of
telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so
antique.
[And her only thirty-one.]
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face.
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
[She's had five already, and nearly died of
young George.]
The chemist said it would be all right, but
I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want
children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had
a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the
beauty of it hot -
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight
May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of
eaf
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;
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
Dragigng its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gas-
house
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 garret,
Rattled 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.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupola!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu
. . . .