"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
　　vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
　　Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."
　　
　　
　　I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
　　
　　April is the cruellest month, breeding
　　Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
　　Memory and desire, stirring
　　Dull roots with spring rain.
　　Winter kept us warm, covering
　　Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
　　A little life with dried tubers.
　　Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
　　With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
　　And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
　　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, 20
　　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 dry stone no sound of water. Only
　　There is shadow under this red rock,
　　(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
　　And I will show you something different from either
　　Your shadow at morning striding behind you
　　Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
　　I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30
　　 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, 40
　　Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
　　Od' und 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. 50
　　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, 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?
　　
　　Line 42 Od'] Oed' - Editor.
　　
　　"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 frere!"
　　
　　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
　　Were told upon the walls; staring forms
　　Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
　　Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
　　Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
　　Spread out in fiery points
　　Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 110
　　
　　"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. 120
　　 "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?"
　　 But
　　O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
　　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
　　"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
　　"What shall we ever do?"
　　 The hot water at ten.
　　And if it rains, a closed car at four.
　　And we shall play a game of chess,
　　Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
　　
　　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 alright, but I've never been the same.
　　You are a proper fool, I said.
　　Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
　　What you get married for if you don't want children?
　　HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
　　Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
　　And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot -
　　HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
　　HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
　　Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170
　　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 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.
　　
　　Line 161 ALRIGHT. This spelling occurs also in
　　the Hogarth Press edition - Editor.
　　
　　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 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 200
　　They wash their feet in soda water
　　Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
　　
　　Twit twit twit
　　Jug jug jug jug jug jug
　　So rudely forc'd.
　　Tereu
　　
　　Unreal City
　　Under the brown fog of a winter noon
　　Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
　　Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 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 Metropole.
　　
　　At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
　　Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
　　Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
　　I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
　　Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
　　At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220
　　Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
　　The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
　　Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
　　Out of the window perilously spread
　　Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
　　On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
　　Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
　　I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
　　Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
　　I too awaited the expected guest. 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 unreproved, 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:
　　"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
　　When lovely woman stoops to folly and
　　Paces about her room again, alone,
　　She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
　　And puts a record on the gramophone.
　　
　　"This music crept by me upon the waters"
　　And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
　　O 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.
　　 Weialala leia
　　 Wallala 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 Moorgate, and my heart
　　Under my feet. After the event
　　He wept. He promised 'a new start'.
　　I made no comment. What should I resent?"
　　"On Margate Sands. 300
　　I can connect
　　Nothing with nothing.
　　The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
　　My people humble people who expect
　　Nothing."
　　 la la
　　
　　To Carthage then I came
　　
　　Burning burning burning burning
　　O Lord Thou pluckest me out
　　O 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
　　O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
　　Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
　　
　　V. WHAT 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
　　We who were living are 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
　　Which are mountains of rock without water
　　If there were water we should stop and drink
　　Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
　　Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
　　If there were only water amongst the rock
　　Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
　　Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
　　There is not even silence in the mountains
　　But dry sterile thunder without rain
　　There is not even solitude in the mountains
　　But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
　　From doors of mudcracked houses
　　 If there were water
　　And no rock
　　If there were rock
　　And also water
　　And water 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
　　Where 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
　　When I count, there are only you and I together
　　But when I look ahead up the white road
　　There is always another one walking beside you
　　Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
　　I do not know whether a man or a woman
　　- But who is that on the other side of you?
　　
　　What is that sound high in the air
　　Murmur of maternal lamentation
　　Who are those hooded hordes swarming
　　Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth 370
　　Ringed by the flat horizon only
　　What is the city over the mountains
　　Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
　　Falling towers
　　Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
　　Vienna London
　　Unreal
　　
　　A woman drew her long black hair out tight
　　And fiddled whisper music on those strings
　　And bats with baby faces in the violet light 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
　　Which an age of prudence can never retract
　　By this, and this only, we have existed
　　Which is not to be found in our obituaries
　　Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
　　Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
　　In our empty rooms 410
　　DA
　　Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
　　Turn in the door once and turn once only
　　We think of the key, each in his prison
　　Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
　　Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
　　Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
　　DA
　　Damyata: The boat responded
　　Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 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 che gli affina
　　Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
　　Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie 430
　　These fragments I have shored against my ruins
　　Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
　　Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
　　 Shantih shantih shantih
　　
　　Line 416 aetherial] aethereal
　　Line 429 ceu] uti - Editor
　　
　　
　　NOTES ON "THE WASTE LAND"
　　
　　Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the
　　incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested
　　by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend:
　　From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan).<1> Indeed,
　　so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate
　　the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do;
　　and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself)
　　to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble.
　　To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has
　　influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have
　　used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is
　　acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem
　　certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
　　
　　<1> Macmillan] Cambridge.
　　
　　
　　I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
　　
　　Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel 2:1.
　　
　　23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.
　　
　　31. V. Tristan und Isolde, 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 Merchant appear later; also the "crowds of people," and
　　Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves
　　(an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily,
　　with the Fisher King himself.
　　
　　60. Cf. Baudelaire:
　　
　　 "Fourmillante cite;, cite; pleine de reves,
　　 Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant."
　　
　　63. Cf. Inferno, iii. 55-7.
　　
　　 "si lunga tratta
　　 di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto
　　 che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta."
　　
　　64. Cf. Inferno, iv. 25-7:
　　
　　 "Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
　　 "non avea pianto, ma' che di sospiri,
　　 "che l'aura eterna facevan tremare."
　　
　　68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
　　
　　74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil .
　　
　　76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.
　　
　　II. A GAME OF CHESS
　　
　　77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.
　　
　　92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726:
　　
　　 dependent lychni laquearibus aureis 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, l. 204.
　　
　　115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
　　
　　118. Cf. Webster: "Is the wind in that door still?"
　　
　　126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
　　
　　138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton's Women beware Women.
　　
　　III. THE FIRE SERMON
　　
　　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 "carriage and insurance
　　free to London"; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed
　　to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
　　
　　Notes 196 and 197 were transposed in this and the Hogarth Press edition,
　　but have been corrected here.
　　
　　210. "Carriage and insurance free"] "cost, insurance and freight"-Editor.
　　
　　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 are one woman,
　　and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact,
　　is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is
　　of great anthropological interest:
　　
　　 '. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
　　 Quam, quae contingit maribus,' dixisse, 'voluptas.'
　　 Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
　　 Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
　　 Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
　　 Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
　　 Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
　　 Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
　　 Vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,'
　　 Dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
　　 Nunc quoque vos feriam!' percussis anguibus isdem
　　 Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
　　 Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
　　 Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
　　 Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
　　 Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
　　 At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
　　 Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
　　 Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
　　
　　221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in mind
　　the "longshore" or "dory" fisherman, 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 Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).
　　
　　266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here.
　　From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn.
　　V. Gutterdsammerung, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.
　　
　　279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra
　　to Philip of Spain:
　　
　　"In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river.
　　(The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop,
　　when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert
　　at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they
　　should not be married if the queen pleased."
　　
　　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 Mount) from which these words are taken,
　　will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism
　　in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
　　of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
　　
　　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. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
　　
　　In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:
　　the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
　　(see Miss Weston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
　　
　　357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush
　　which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of
　　Birds of Eastern North America) "it is most at home in secluded
　　woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable
　　for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and
　　exquisite modulation they are unequalled." Its "water-dripping song"
　　is justly celebrated.
　　
　　360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one
　　of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one
　　of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers,
　　at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion
　　that there was one more member than could actually be counted.
　　
　　367-77. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos:
　　
　　"Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem
　　Wege zum Chaos, f鋒rt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang
　　und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang.
　　Ueber diese Lieder lacht der B黵ger beleidigt, der Heilige
　　und Seher h鰎t sie mit Tr鋘en."
　　
　　402. "Datta, dayadhvam, damyata" (Give, sympathize,
　　control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found
　　in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found
　　in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.
　　
　　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, xxxiii. 46:
　　
　　 "ed io sentii chiavar l'uscio di sotto
　　 all'orribile torre."
　　
　　Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346:
　　
　　"My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my
　　thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within
　　my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its
　　elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround
　　it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul,
　　the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul."
　　
　　425. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.
　　
　　428. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148.
　　
　　 "'Ara vos prec per aquella valor
　　 'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
　　 'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.'
　　 Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina."
　　
　　429. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. 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 a feeble translation
　　of the content of this word.

　　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.
　　What might have been is an abstraction
　　Remaining a perpetual possibility
　　Only in a world of speculation.
　　What 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. My words 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 corner. Through the first gate,
　　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 shrubbery,
　　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 were behind us, reflected in the pool.
　　Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
　　Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
　　Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
　　Go, 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.
　　
　　II
　　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
　　We 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. Neither 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,
　　Where past and future are gathered. Neither 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,
　　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.
　　
　　III
　　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 flicker
　　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 bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
　　That blows before and after time,
　　Wind 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 and the bell have buried the day,
　　The black cloud carries the sun away.
　　Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
　　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
　　Words 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 Word in the desert
　　Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
　　The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
　　The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
　　
　　 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.

　　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,
　　Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
　　And 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 commodiois sacrament.
　　Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
　　Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
　　Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
　　Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
　　Rustically 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
　　Wrinkles and slides. I am here
　　Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
　　
　　II
　　
　　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
　　Comets 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
　　With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
　　It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
　　What 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 turned 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. We 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 are all gone under the sea.
　　
　　The dancers are all gone under the hill.
　　
　　
　　III
　　
　　O dark 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
　　With 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 facade 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—
　　I 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 the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
　　Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
　　So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
　　Whisper 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 are 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.
　　
　　
　　
　　IV
　　
　　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 millionaire,
　　Wherein, if we do well, we shall
　　Die of the absolute paternal care
　　That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
　　
　　
　　The chill 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 call 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 use words, and every attempt
　　Is a wholly 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
　　One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
　　Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
　　With 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. Not 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 be 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
　　When here and now cease to matter.
　　Old men ought to be explorers
　　Here or there does not matter
　　We must be still and still moving
　　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.

　　II 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. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
　　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, are 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.
　　
　　IIWhere is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
　　The silent withering of autumn flowers
　　Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
　　Where is there and 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,
　　While 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.
　　
　　 Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
　　Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
　　We 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 have to think of them as forever bailing,
　　Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
　　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 wailing,
　　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,
　　Which 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—
　　We had the experience but missed the meaning,
　　And approach to the meaning restores the experience
　　In a different form, beyond any meaning
　　We 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:
　　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
　　With such permanence as time has. We 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 torment 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,
　　Waves 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 course by: but in the sombre season
　　Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.
　　
　　IIII sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
　　Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
　　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.
　　When 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 are 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
　　Watching 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 are not those who saw the harbour
　　Receding, or those who will disembark.
　　Here between the hither and the farther shore
　　While time is withdrawn, consider 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 death is every moment)
　　Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
　　And do not think of the fruit of action.
　　Fare forward.
　　 O voyagers, O seamen,
　　You who came 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.
　　
　　IVLady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
　　Pray for all those who are in ships, those
　　Whose 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
　　Women who have seen their sons or husbands
　　Setting forth, and not returning:
　　Figlia del tuo figlio,
　　Queen of Heaven.
　　
　　 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.
　　
　　VTo 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
　　With 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
　　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 are the music
　　While 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 Incarnation.
　　Here the impossible union
　　Of spheres of existence is actual,
　　Here the past and future
　　Are conquered, and reconciled,
　　Where action were otherwise movement
　　Of that which is only moved
　　And has in it no source of movement—
　　Driven by daemonic, 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;
　　We, content at the last
　　If our temporal reversion nourish
　　(Not too far from the yew-tree)
　　The life of significant soil.

　　Little Gidding
　　I
　　Midwinter 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 ice, 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.
　　Where 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
　　White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
　　It would be the same at the end of the journey,
　　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 turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
　　And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
　　Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
　　From which 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
　　Which 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 are here to kneel
　　Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
　　Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
　　Of the praying mind, 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.
　　
　　
　　
　　II
　　
　　Ash on and 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 walls, 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.
　　
　　Water and fire succeed
　　The town, the pasture and the weed.
　　Water and fire deride
　　The sacrifice that we denied.
　　Water 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
　　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: 'What! 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 words 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,
　　 We 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
　　 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
　　 Which 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
　　 Where 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.
　　
　　
　　
　　III
　　
　　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
　　Which 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 be servitude,
　　History may be 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
　　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 of some 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.
　　We cannot revive old factions
　　We 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.
　　Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
　　We 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
　　By the purification of the motive
　　In the ground of our beseeching.
　　
　　
　　
　　IV
　　
　　The dove descending breaks the air
　　With 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 of pyre—
　　 To be redeemed from fire by fire.
　　
　　Who then devised the torment? Love.
　　Love is the unfamiliar Name
　　Behind the hands that wove
　　The intolerable shirt of flame
　　Which human power cannot remove.
　　 We only live, only suspire
　　 Consumed by either fire or fire.
　　
　　
　　
　　V
　　
　　What we call the beginning is often the end
　　And to make and 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,
　　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
　　
　　We shall not cease from exploration
　　And the end of all our exploring
　　Will be to arrive where we started
　　And know the place for the first time.
　　Through the unknown, unremembered 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 children in the apple-tree
　　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.

　　S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
　　A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
　　Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
　　Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
　　Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
　　Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
　　
　　
　　LET us go then, you and I,
　　When the evening is spread out against the sky
　　Like a patient etherized upon a table;
　　Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
　　The muttering retreats 5
　　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…. 10
　　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, 15
　　The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-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, 20
　　And seeing that it was a soft October night,
　　Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
　　
　　And indeed there will be time
　　For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
　　Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25
　　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; 30
　　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 35
　　Talking of Michelangelo.
　　
　　And indeed there will be time
　　To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
　　Time to turn back and descend the stair,
　　With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
　　(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
　　My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
　　My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
　　(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
　　Do I dare 45
　　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:
　　Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
　　I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
　　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— 55
　　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? 60
　　 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 65
　　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 70
　　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! 75
　　Smoothed by long fingers,
　　Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
　　Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
　　Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
　　Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
　　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 Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
　　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, 90
　　To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
　　To have squeezed the universe into a ball
　　To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
　　To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
　　Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
　　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,
　　Would it have been worth while, 100
　　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: 105
　　Would it have been worth while
　　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.”
　　. . . . . . . .
　　 110
　　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, 115
　　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 … 120
　　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. 125
　　
　　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.
　　
　　We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
　　By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
　　Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

　　眼睛，我曾在最后一刻的泪光中看见你
　　穿越在界限之上
　　在死亡这畔的梦国里
　　黄金时代的景象再现
　　我看到了眼睛，但没有泪水
　　这是我的苦难
　　
　　这就是我的苦难
　　眼睛，我不该再次见到你
　　目光坚毅的双眼
　　眼睛，我不该看见你，除非是
　　在死亡的另一王国的门口
　　那儿，正如这里
　　眼睛会持久一些
　　泪水也会持久一些
　　并将我们一起当成笑柄
　　
　　------------------------------
　　
　　我最后一次看到的充满泪水的眼睛
　　
　　我最后一次看到的充满泪水的眼睛
　　越过分界线
　　这里，在死亡的梦幻王国中
　　金色的幻象重新出现
　　我看到眼睛，但未看到泪水
　　这是我的苦难
　　这是我的苦难
　　我再也见不到的眼睛
　　充满决心的眼睛
　　除了在死亡另一王国的门口
　　我再也见不到的眼睛
　　那里，就像在这里
　　眼睛的生命力更长一些
　　比泪水的生命力更长一些
　　眼睛在嘲弄我们。
　　裘小龙译

　　风在四点骤然刮起，撞击着
　　在生与死之间摆动的钟铃
　　这里，在死亡的梦幻国土中
　　混乱的争斗出现了苏醒的回音
　　它究竟是梦呢还是其他 ？
　　当逐渐变暗的河面
　　竞是一张流着汗和泪的脸时
　　我的目光穿越渐暗的河水
　　营地的篝火与异国的长矛一起晃动。
　　这儿，越过死亡的另一河流
　　鞑靼族的骑兵摇晃着他们的矛头。

　　红河、红河，
　　慢慢流淌的热默默无声，
　　没有意志能像河流那般平静。
　　难道热只在一度听到的
　　反舌鸟的婉啭中运动？静谧的山岭
　　等待着。大门等待着。紫色的树，
　　白色的树，等待，等待，
　　延宕，衰败。生存着，生存着，
　　从不运动。永远运动的
　　铁的思想和我一起来临
　　又和我一起消失：
　　红河、河、河。

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 5
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.

　　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.

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.

III
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 light 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
His 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 are 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.

　　Thou hast committed--
　　Fornication: but that was in another country
　　And besides, the wench is dead.
　　-- The Jew of Malta.
　　
　　
　　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,
　　Who has, and gives
　　Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
　　How much it means that I say this to you--
　　Without these friendships--life, what cauchemar!"
　　Among the windings of the violins
　　And the ariettes
　　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 by the public clocks.
　　Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.
　　
　　II
　　Now that lilacs are 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
　　What life is, you should 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.
　　"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
　　Reiterates some worn-out common song
　　With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
　　Recalling things that other people have desired.
　　Are these ideas right or wrong?
　　
　　III
　　The October night comes down; returning as before
　　Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
　　I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
　　And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
　　
　　"And 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."
　　My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-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!)
　　Why we have not developed into friends."
　　I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
　　Suddenly, his expression 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.
　　We must leave it now to fate.
　　You will write, at any rate.
　　Perhaps it is not too late.
　　I shall sit here, serving tea to friends."
　　
　　And I must borrow 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--
　　Well! 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
　　With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
　　Doubtful, for quite 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?

　　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 towards you in the light of the door
　　Which opens on her like a grin.
　　You see the border of her dress
　　Is torn and stained with sand,
　　And you see the corner of her eye
　　Twists like a crooked pin."
　　
　　The memory throws up high and dry
　　A crowd of twisted things;
　　A twisted branch upon the beach
　　Eaten smooth, and polished
　　As if the world gave up
　　The secret of its skeleton,
　　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 running 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:
　　"Regard the moon,
　　La lune ne guarde 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,
　　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.

　　'A cold coming we had of it,
　　Just the worst time of the year
　　For a journey, and such a journey:
　　The ways deep and the weather sharp,
　　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 grumbling
　　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 in our ears, saying
　　That this was all folly.
　　
　　Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
　　Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
　　With 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.
　　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.

　　THE broad-backed hippopotamus
　　Rests on his belly in the mud;
　　Although he seems so firm to us
　　He is merely flesh and blood.
　　
　　Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
　　Susceptible to nervous shock;
　　While the True Church can never fail
　　For it is based upon a rock.
　　
　　The hippo's feeble steps may err
　　In compassing material ends,
　　While the True Church need never stir
　　To gather in its dividends.
　　
　　The 'potamus can never reach
　　The mango on the mango-tree;
　　But fruits of pomegranate and peach
　　Refresh the Church from over sea.
　　
　　At mating time the hippo's voice
　　Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
　　But every week we hear rejoice
　　The Church, at being one with God.
　　
　　The hippopotamus's day
　　Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
　　God works in a mysterious way--
　　The Church can sleep and feed at once.
　　
　　I saw the 'potamus take wing
　　Ascending from the damp savannas,
　　And quiring angels round him sing
　　The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
　　
　　Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
　　And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
　　Among the saints he shall be seen
　　Performing on a harp of gold.
　　
　　He shall be washed as white as snow,
　　By all the martyr'd virgins kist,
　　While the True Church remains below
　　Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

　　APENECK Sweeney spreads his knees
　　Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
　　The zebra stripes along his jaw
　　Swelling to maculate giraffe.
　　
　　The circles of the stormy moon
　　Slide westward toward the River Plate,
　　Death and the Raven drift above
　　And Sweeney guards the horned gate.
　　
　　Gloomy Orion and the Dog
　　Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
　　The person in the Spanish cape
　　Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees
　　
　　Slips and pulls the table cloth
　　Overturns a coffee-cup,
　　Reorganized upon the floor
　　She yawns and draws a stocking up;
　　
　　The silent man in mocha brown
　　Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
　　The waiter brings in oranges
　　Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;
　　
　　The silent vertebrate in brown
　　Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
　　Rachel née Rabinovitch
　　Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
　　
　　She and the lady in the cape
　　Are suspect, thought to be in league;
　　Therefore the man with heavy eyes
　　Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
　　
　　Leaves the room and reappears
　　Outside the window, leaning in,
　　Branches of 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 droppings fall
　　To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

　　Miss Helen Slingsby 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.

　　The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
　　Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
　　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 turn to nod good-bye to 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."

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire--nil nisi divinum stabile
est; caetera fumus--the gondola stopped, the old
palace was there, how charming its grey and pink--
goats and monkeys, with such hair too!--so the
countess passed on until she came through the
little park, where Niobe presented her 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 Istria
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 boatman 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.

　　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: "Some one frames upon the keys
　　That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
　　The night and moonshine; music which we seize
　　To body forth our 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 aid indifferent and imperious
　　At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
　　And--"Are we then so serious?"