INTRO TO 20TH CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY

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When You Are Old

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BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, 

And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 

And loved your beauty with love false or true, 

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 

And loved the sorrows of your changing face; 

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled 

And paced upon the mountains overhead 

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 

you can listen to this poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43283

The Waste Land

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BY T. S. ELIOT

                                  FOR EZRA POUND
                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              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, 

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 arch-duke’s, 

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, 

And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. 

In the mountains, there you feel free. 

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

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow 

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only 

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, 

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, 

And the 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. 

                      Frisch weht der Wind 

                      Der Heimat zu 

                      Mein Irisch Kind, 

                      Wo weilest du? 

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, 

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not 

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither 

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 

Looking into the heart of light, the silence. 

Oed’ und leer das Meer. 

  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, 

Had a bad cold, nevertheless 

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, 

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, 

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) 

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, 

The lady of situations. 

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, 

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, 

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, 

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find 

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. 

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, 

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: 

One must be so careful these days. 

  Unreal City, 

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, 

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, 

I had not thought death had undone so many. 

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, 

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. 

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, 

To where Saint Mary 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! 

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, 

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? 

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? 

“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, 

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! 

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

              II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, 

Glowed on the marble, where the glass 

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines 

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing) 

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched 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 

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 carvéd dolphin swam. 

Above the antique mantel was displayed 

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene 

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king 

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice 

And still she cried, and still the world pursues, 

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears. 

And other withered stumps of time 

Were told upon the walls; staring forms 

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. 

Footsteps shuffled on the stair. 

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair 

Spread out in fiery points 

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 

  “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 

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

  “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 

“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

  I think we are in rats’ alley 

Where the dead men lost their bones. 

  “What is that noise?”

                          The wind under the door. 

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” 

                           Nothing again nothing. 

                                                        “Do 

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

“Nothing?”

       I remember 

Those are pearls that were his eyes. 

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

           

                                                                           But 

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— 

It’s so elegant 

So intelligent 

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?” 

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

“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? 

“What shall we ever do?” 

                                               The hot water at ten. 

And if it rains, a closed car at four. 

And we shall play a game of chess, 

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. 

  When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said— 

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, 

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 

Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. 

He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you 

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. 

You have them all out, 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. 

Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. 

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 

If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.

Others can pick and choose if you can’t. 

But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling. 

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. 

(And her only thirty-one.) 

I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, 

It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. 

(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 

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

You are a proper fool, I said. 

Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, 

What you get married for if you don’t want children? 

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, 

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— 

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. 

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

              III. The Fire Sermon

  The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of 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; 

Departed, have left no addresses. 

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, 

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. 

But at my back in a cold blast I hear 

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. 

A rat crept softly through the vegetation 

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank 

While I was fishing in the dull canal 

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck 

And on the king my father’s death before him. 

White bodies naked on the low damp ground 

And bones cast in a little low dry garret, 

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year. 

But at my back from time to time I hear 

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring 

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. 

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter 

And on her daughter 

They wash their feet in soda water 

Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la 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 

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 

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. 

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; 

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; 

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, 

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 

               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 

               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 

                                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. 

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 

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, 

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 

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 

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 

   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? 

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 

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 

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, 

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 

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

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, aethereal rumours 

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus 

DA 

Damyata: The boat responded 

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 

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 uti chelidon—O swallow swallow 

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie 

These fragments I have shored against my ruins 

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

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

                  Shantih     shantih     shantih 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 

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BY T. S. ELIOT

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche 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 

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 

Streets that follow like a tedious argument 

Of insidious intent 

To lead you to an overwhelming question ... 

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 

Let us go and make our visit. 

In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo. 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the 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, 

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; 

There will be time, there will be time 

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 

There will be time to murder and create, 

And time for all the works and days of hands 

That lift and drop a question on your plate; 

Time for you and time for me, 

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 

And for a hundred visions and revisions, 

Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

In the room the women come and go 

Talking of Michelangelo. 

And indeed there will be time 

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 

Time to turn back and descend the stair, 

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — 

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) 

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 

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 

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, 

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— 

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 

Then how should I begin 

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

               And how should I presume? 

And I have known the arms already, known them all— 

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) 

Is it perfume from a dress 

That makes me so digress? 

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

               And should I then presume? 

               And how should I begin? 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws 

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. 

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 

Smoothed by long fingers, 

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, 

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, 

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; 

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 

And in short, I was afraid. 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 

Would it have been worth while, 

To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

To have squeezed the universe into a ball 

To roll it towards some overwhelming question, 

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 

If one, settling a pillow by her head 

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; 

               That is not it, at all.” 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 

Would it have been worth while, 

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 

And this, and so much more?— 

It is impossible to say just what I mean! 

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

Would it have been worth while 

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 

And turning toward the window, should say: 

               “That is not it at all, 

               That is not what I meant, at all.” 

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 

Am an attendant lord, one that will do 

To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 

Deferential, glad to be of use, 

Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 

Almost, at times, the Fool. 

I grow old ... I grow old ... 

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

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

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

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

I do not think that they will sing to me. 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 

When the wind blows the water white and black. 

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

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