Thomas Stearns Eliot – Song 2

If space and time, as sages say,    Are things which cannot be,The fly that lives a single day    Has lived as long as we.But let us live while yet we may,    While love and life are free,For time is time, and runs away,    Though sages disagree.The...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S'io credesse chc mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa Gamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno viva 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...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a smallgroup of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.Groaner: a whistling buoy.)II do not know much about gods; but I think that the riverIs a strong brown...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo ...Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—Lean on a garden urn—Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—Fling them to the ground and turnWith a fugitive resentment in your eyes:But weave, weave the sunlight...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Gerontion

Thou hast nor youth nor ageBut as it were an after dinner sleepDreaming of both.Here I am, an old man in a dry month,Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.I was neither at the hot gatesNor fought in the warm rainNor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,Bitten by flies,...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Aunt Helen

Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,And lived in a small house near a fashionable squareCared for by servants to the number of four.Now when she died there was silence in heavenAnd silence at her end of the street.The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet–He was...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Portrait of a Lady

Thou hast committed – Fornication: but that was in another countryAnd besides, the wench is dead.The Jew of Malta.IAmong the smoke and fog of a December afternoonYou have the scene arrange itself--as it will seem to do--With "I have saved this afternoon for you";And four wax...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Morning at the Window

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,And along the trampled edges of the streetI am aware of the damp souls of housemaidsSprouting despondently at area gates.The brown waves of fog toss up to meTwisted faces from the bottom of the street,And tear from a passer-by...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Waste Land

Part 1 - Burial of the DeadApril is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain.Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers.Summer surprised us, coming over...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Spleen

Sunday: this satisfied procession Of definite Sunday faces; Bonnets, silk hats, and conscious graces In repetition that displaces Your mental self-possession By this unwarranted digression. Evening, lights, and tea! Children and cats in the alley; Dejection unable...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Preludes

IThe winter's evening settles downWith smells of steaks in passageways.Six o'clock.The burnt-out ends of smoky days.And now a gusty shower wrapsThe grimy scrapsOf withered leaves across your feetAnd newpapers from vacant lots;The showers beatOn empty blinds and chimney-pots,And...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Whispers of Immortality

Webster was much possessed by deathAnd saw the skull beneath the skin;And breastless creatures under groundLeaned backward with a lipless grin.Daffodil bulbs instead of ballsStared from the sockets of the eyes!He knew that thought clings round dead limbsTightening its lusts and...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Old Deuteronomy

Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time;He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession.He was famous in proverb and famous in rhymeA long while before Queen Victoria's accession.Old Deuteronomy's buried nine wivesAnd more--I am tempted to say, ninety-nine;And his numerous progeny...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he deadA penny for the Old GuyIWe are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – To Walter de la Mare

The children who explored the brook and foundA desert island with a sandy cove(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground,For here the water buffalo may rove,The kinkajou, the mungabey, aboundIn the dark jungle of a mango grove,And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree -The guardians...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Twelve o clock.Along the reaches of the streetHeld in a lunar synthesis,Whispering lunar incantationsDissolve the floors of memoryAnd all its clear relationsIts divisions and precisions,Every street lamp that I passBeats like a fatalistic drum,And through the spaces of the darkMidnight...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Rum Tum Tugger

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,If you set him on a rat then...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Eyes That Last I Saw In Tears

Eyes that last I saw in tearsThrough divisionHere in death's dream kingdomThe golden vision reappearsI see the eyes but not the tearsThis is my afflictionThis is my afflictionEyes I shall not see againEyes of decisionEyes I shall not see unlessAt the door of death's other kingdomWhere,...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – The Boston Evening Transcript

The readers of the Boston Evening TranscriptSway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.When evening quickens faintly in the street,Wakening the appetites of life in someAnd to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,I mount the steps and ring the bell, turningWearily, as one...

Thomas Stearns Eliot – Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in herlaughter and being part of it, until her teeth wereonly accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentaryrecovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of herthroat, bruised...