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Poems
POEMS
by T. S. ELIOT
New York Alfred A. Knopf 1920
To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915
Certain of these poems first appeared in Poetry, Blast, Others, The
Little Review, and Art and Letters.
CONTENTS
Gerontion Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar Sweeney
Erect A Cooking Egg Le Directeur Mélange adultère de tout Lune de Miel
The Hippopotamus Dans le Restaurant Whispers of Immortality Mr.
Eliot's Sunday Morning Service Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady Preludes Rhapsody on a
Windy Night Morning at the Window The Boston Evening Transcript Aunt
Helen Cousin Nancy Mr. Apollinax Hysteria Conversation Galante La
Figlia Che Pianga
POEMS
Gerontion
Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming 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 gates Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, Bitten by flies,
fought. My house is a decayed house, And the jew squats on the window
sill, the owner, Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp, Blistered in
Brussels, patched and peeled in London. The goat coughs at night in
the field overhead; Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds. The woman
keeps the kitchen, makes tea, Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish
gutter.
I an old man, A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign": The word within a
word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the
juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas, To be eaten,
to be divided, to be drunk Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero With
caressing hands, at Limoges Who walked all night in the next room; By
Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians; By Madame de Tornquist, in the
dark room Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp Who turned in the
hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no
ghosts, An old man in a draughty house Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many
cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with
whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when
our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple
confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's
not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered
passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be
dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think Neither fear
nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism.
Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are
shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We
have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think
at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any
concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this
honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose
beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why
should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated? I
have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use
it for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations Protract the profit of their
chilled delirium, Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled, With
pungent sauces, multiply variety In a wilderness of mirrors. What will
the spider do, Suspend its operations, will the weevil Delay? De
Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled Beyond the circuit of the
shuddering Bear In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the
windy straits Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn, White feathers in
the snow, the Gulf claims, And an old man driven by the Trades To a
sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house, Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire--nil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera
fumus--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.