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.
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
185
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.
195
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.
205
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 week-end at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
215
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 tea-time, 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,
225
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,
235
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
245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing 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,
255
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.
265
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
275
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
285
South-west 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.―
295
―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 finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.‖
305
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 seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
315
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 torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
325
Prison and place 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
335
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 mud-cracked houses
If there were water
345
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
350
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
355
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
360
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?
365
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
370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
375
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
380
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
385
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.
390
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
400
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
405
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
410
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
415
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
420
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?
425
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 à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo‘s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
NOTES
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). 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 Attis Adonis
Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem
certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel II, i.
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.
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 cité, cité pleine de rèves,
Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.‖
63. Cf. Inferno, III. 55–57:
―si lunga tratta
di gente, ch‘io non avrei mai creduto
che morte tanta n‘avesse disfatta.‖
64. Cf. Inferno, IV. 25–27:
―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. 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…―
197. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.
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.
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. Götterdämmerung, III, i: The Rhinedaughters.
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 in 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 unequaled.‖ 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.
366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: ―Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der
halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund
entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese
Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.‖
401. ―Datta, dayadhvam, damyata‖ (Give, sympathise, 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.
407. 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.‖
411. 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.‖
424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.
427. 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.‖
428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.
431. V. Kyd‘s Spanish Tragedy. http://vimeo.com/98765389
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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.