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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:17:12 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:17:12 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1459-0.txt b/1459-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9bf7fb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/1459-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,700 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1459 *** + +PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS + +By T. S. Eliot + + + + + To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915 + + +Certain of these poems appeared first in “Poetry” and “Others” + + +Contents + + 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 Piange + + + + +The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + + + _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 + 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 toward 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. + + + + +Portrait of a Lady + + 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 who 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 + 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? + + + + +Preludes + + 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. + + + + +Rhapsody on a Windy Night + + Twelve o’clock. + Along the reaches of the street + Held in a lunar synthesis, + Whispering lunar incantations + Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a 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 garde aucune rancune, + She winks a feeble eye, + She smiles into corners. + She smoothes 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 old 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. + + + + +Morning at the Window + + 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 + 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. + + + + +The Boston Evening Transcript + + The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript + Sway in the blind 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.” + + + + +Aunt Helen + + 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. + + + + +Cousin Nancy + + Miss Nancy Ellicot + Strode across the hills and broke them + Rode across the hills and broke them-- + The barren New England hills + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. + + + + +Mr. Apollinax + + When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States + His laughter tinkled among the teacups. + I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, + And of Priapus in the shrubbery + Gaping at the lady in the swing. + In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s + He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. + His laughter was submarine and profound + Like the old man of the seats + Hidden under coral islands + Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, + Dropping from fingers of surf. + I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, + Or grinning over a screen + With seaweed in its hair. + I heard the beat of centaurs’ hoofs over the hard turf + As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. + “He is a charming man”--“But after all what did he mean?”-- + “He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,”-- + “There was something he said that I might have challenged.” + Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah + I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. + + + + +Hysteria + + 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. + + + + +Conversation Galante + + 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious + At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--” + And--“Are we then so serious?” + + + + +La Figlia Che Piange + + 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 turn + With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: + But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + + So I would have had him leave, + So I would have had her stand and grieve, + So he would have left + As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised + As the mind deserts the body it has used. + I should find + Some way incomparably light and deft, + Some way we both should understand, + Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + + She turned away, but with the autumn weather + Compelled my imagination many days, + Many days and many hours: + Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. + And I wonder how they should have been together! + I should have lost a gesture and a pose. + Sometimes these cogitations still amaze + The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1459 *** diff --git a/1459-h/1459-h.htm b/1459-h/1459-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c7e17dc --- /dev/null +++ b/1459-h/1459-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,839 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Prufrock and Other Observations, by T. S. Eliot</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +pre { font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1459 ***</div> + + <h1> + PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS + </h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By T. S. Eliot</h2> + + <h4> + To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915 <br /><br /><br /> Certain of these poems appeared + first in “Poetry” and “Others” + </h4> + + <hr /> + + <h3> + Contents + </h3> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#linklovesong"> The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> Portrait of a Lady </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> Preludes </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Rhapsody on a Windy Night </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Morning at the Window </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> The Boston Evening Transcript </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Aunt Helen </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Cousin Nancy </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Mr. Apollinax </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Hysteria </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Conversation Galante </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> La Figlia Che Piange </a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + + <hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="linklovesong" id="linklovesong"></a> + The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + <i>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.</i> +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 toward 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></a> + Portrait of a Lady + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Thou hast committed— + Fornication: but that was in another country, + And besides, the wench is dead. + The Jew Of Malta +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 who 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? +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 + 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? +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a> + Preludes + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a> + Rhapsody on a Windy Night + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Twelve o’clock. + Along the reaches of the street + Held in a lunar synthesis, + Whispering lunar incantations + Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a 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 garde aucune rancune, + She winks a feeble eye, + She smiles into corners. + She smoothes 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 old 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></a> + Morning at the Window + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></a> + The Boston Evening Transcript + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript + Sway in the blind 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.” +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></a> + Aunt Helen + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></a> + Cousin Nancy + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Miss Nancy Ellicot + Strode across the hills and broke them + Rode across the hills and broke them— + The barren New England hills + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"></a> + Mr. Apollinax + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States + His laughter tinkled among the teacups. + I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, + And of Priapus in the shrubbery + Gaping at the lady in the swing. + In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s + He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. + His laughter was submarine and profound + Like the old man of the seats + Hidden under coral islands + Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, + Dropping from fingers of surf. + I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, + Or grinning over a screen + With seaweed in its hair. + I heard the beat of centaurs’ hoofs over the hard turf + As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. + “He is a charming man”—“But after all what did he mean?”— + “He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,”— + “There was something he said that I might have challenged.” + Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah + I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></a> + Hysteria + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></a> + Conversation Galante + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious + At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—” + And—“Are we then so serious?” +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"></a> + La Figlia Che Piange + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 turn + With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: + But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + + So I would have had him leave, + So I would have had her stand and grieve, + So he would have left + As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised + As the mind deserts the body it has used. + I should find + Some way incomparably light and deft, + Some way we both should understand, + Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + + She turned away, but with the autumn weather + Compelled my imagination many days, + Many days and many hours: + Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. + And I wonder how they should have been together! + I should have lost a gesture and a pose. + Sometimes these cogitations still amaze + The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + + <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1459 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Prufrock and Other Observations + +Author: T. S. Eliot + +Release Date: September, 1998 [eBook #1459] +[Most recently updated: November 25, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Bill Brewer and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS *** + + + + +PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS + +By T. S. Eliot + + + + + To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915 + + +Certain of these poems appeared first in “Poetry” and “Others” + + +Contents + + 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 Piange + + + + +The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + + + _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 + 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 toward 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. + + + + +Portrait of a Lady + + 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 who 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 + 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? + + + + +Preludes + + 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. + + + + +Rhapsody on a Windy Night + + Twelve o’clock. + Along the reaches of the street + Held in a lunar synthesis, + Whispering lunar incantations + Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a 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 garde aucune rancune, + She winks a feeble eye, + She smiles into corners. + She smoothes 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 old 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. + + + + +Morning at the Window + + 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 + 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. + + + + +The Boston Evening Transcript + + The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript + Sway in the blind 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.” + + + + +Aunt Helen + + 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. + + + + +Cousin Nancy + + Miss Nancy Ellicot + Strode across the hills and broke them + Rode across the hills and broke them-- + The barren New England hills + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. + + + + +Mr. Apollinax + + When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States + His laughter tinkled among the teacups. + I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, + And of Priapus in the shrubbery + Gaping at the lady in the swing. + In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s + He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. + His laughter was submarine and profound + Like the old man of the seats + Hidden under coral islands + Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, + Dropping from fingers of surf. + I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, + Or grinning over a screen + With seaweed in its hair. + I heard the beat of centaurs’ hoofs over the hard turf + As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. + “He is a charming man”--“But after all what did he mean?”-- + “He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,”-- + “There was something he said that I might have challenged.” + Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah + I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. + + + + +Hysteria + + 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. + + + + +Conversation Galante + + 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious + At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--” + And--“Are we then so serious?” + + + + +La Figlia Che Piange + + 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 turn + With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: + But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + + So I would have had him leave, + So I would have had her stand and grieve, + So he would have left + As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised + As the mind deserts the body it has used. + I should find + Some way incomparably light and deft, + Some way we both should understand, + Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + + She turned away, but with the autumn weather + Compelled my imagination many days, + Many days and many hours: + Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. + And I wonder how they should have been together! + I should have lost a gesture and a pose. + Sometimes these cogitations still amaze + The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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S. Eliot</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +pre { font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + </head> + <body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Prufrock and Other Observations, by T. S. Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Prufrock and Other Observations</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: T. S. Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: September, 1998 [eBook #1459]<br /> +[Most recently updated: November 25, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Bill Brewer and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS ***</div> + + <h1> + PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS + </h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By T. S. Eliot</h2> + + <h4> + To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915 <br /><br /><br /> Certain of these poems appeared + first in “Poetry” and “Others” + </h4> + + <hr /> + + <h3> + Contents + </h3> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#linklovesong"> The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> Portrait of a Lady </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> Preludes </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Rhapsody on a Windy Night </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Morning at the Window </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> The Boston Evening Transcript </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Aunt Helen </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Cousin Nancy </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Mr. Apollinax </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Hysteria </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Conversation Galante </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> La Figlia Che Piange </a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + + <hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="linklovesong" id="linklovesong"></a> + The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + <i>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.</i> +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 toward 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></a> + Portrait of a Lady + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Thou hast committed— + Fornication: but that was in another country, + And besides, the wench is dead. + The Jew Of Malta +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 who 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? +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 + 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? +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></a> + Preludes + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></a> + Rhapsody on a Windy Night + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Twelve o’clock. + Along the reaches of the street + Held in a lunar synthesis, + Whispering lunar incantations + Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a 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 garde aucune rancune, + She winks a feeble eye, + She smiles into corners. + She smoothes 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 old 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></a> + Morning at the Window + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></a> + The Boston Evening Transcript + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript + Sway in the blind 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.” +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></a> + Aunt Helen + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></a> + Cousin Nancy + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Miss Nancy Ellicot + Strode across the hills and broke them + Rode across the hills and broke them— + The barren New England hills + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"></a> + Mr. Apollinax + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States + His laughter tinkled among the teacups. + I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, + And of Priapus in the shrubbery + Gaping at the lady in the swing. + In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s + He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. + His laughter was submarine and profound + Like the old man of the seats + Hidden under coral islands + Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, + Dropping from fingers of surf. + I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, + Or grinning over a screen + With seaweed in its hair. + I heard the beat of centaurs’ hoofs over the hard turf + As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. + “He is a charming man”—“But after all what did he mean?”— + “He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,”— + “There was something he said that I might have challenged.” + Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah + I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></a> + Hysteria + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></a> + Conversation Galante + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious + At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—” + And—“Are we then so serious?” +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + + <h2><a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"></a> + La Figlia Che Piange + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + 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 turn + With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: + But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + + So I would have had him leave, + So I would have had her stand and grieve, + So he would have left + As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised + As the mind deserts the body it has used. + I should find + Some way incomparably light and deft, + Some way we both should understand, + Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + + She turned away, but with the autumn weather + Compelled my imagination many days, + Many days and many hours: + Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. + And I wonder how they should have been together! + I should have lost a gesture and a pose. + Sometimes these cogitations still amaze + The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose. +</pre> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Prufrock and Other Observations + +Author: T. S. Eliot + +Posting Date: August 27, 2008 [EBook #1459] +Release Date: September, 1998 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Bill Brewer + + + + + +PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS + +By T. S. Eliot + + + + + To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915 + + +Certain of these poems appeared first in "Poetry" and "Others" + + +Contents + + 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 Piange + + + + +The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + + + 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 + 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 toward 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. + + + + +Portrait of a Lady + + 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 who 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-a-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 + 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? + + + + +Preludes + + 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. + + + + +Rhapsody on a Windy Night + + Twelve o'clock. + Along the reaches of the street + Held in a lunar synthesis, + Whispering lunar incantations + Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a 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 garde aucune rancune, + She winks a feeble eye, + She smiles into corners. + She smoothes 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 old 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. + + + + +Morning at the Window + + 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 + 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. + + + + +The Boston Evening Transcript + + The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript + Sway in the blind 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." + + + + +Aunt Helen + + 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. + + + + +Cousin Nancy + + Miss Nancy Ellicot + Strode across the hills and broke them + Rode across the hills and broke them-- + The barren New England hills + Riding to hounds + Over the cow-pasture. + + Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked + And danced all the modern dances; + And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, + But they knew that it was modern. + + Upon the glazen shelves kept watch + Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, + The army of unalterable law. + + + + +Mr. Apollinax + + When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States + His laughter tinkled among the teacups. + I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, + And of Priapus in the shrubbery + Gaping at the lady in the swing. + In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah's + He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. + His laughter was submarine and profound + Like the old man of the seats + Hidden under coral islands + Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, + Dropping from fingers of surf. + I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, + Or grinning over a screen + With seaweed in its hair. + I heard the beat of centaurs' hoofs over the hard turf + As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. + "He is a charming man"--"But after all what did he mean?"-- + "He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,"-- + "There was something he said that I might have challenged." + Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah + I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. + + + + +Hysteria + + 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. + + + + +Conversation Galante + + 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious + At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--" + And--"Are we then so serious?" + + + + +La Figlia Che Piange + + 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 turn + With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: + But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + + So I would have had him leave, + So I would have had her stand and grieve, + So he would have left + As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised + As the mind deserts the body it has used. + I should find + Some way incomparably light and deft, + Some way we both should understand, + Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + + She turned away, but with the autumn weather + Compelled my imagination many days, + Many days and many hours: + Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. + And I wonder how they should have been together! + I should have lost a gesture and a pose. + Sometimes these cogitations still amaze + The troubled midnight and the noon's repose. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Prufrock and Other Observations, by T. 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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 Piange + + + + +The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock + + + 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 +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 heres 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 toward 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. + + + +Portrait of a Lady + + 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 Juliets 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 who 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 +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 journeys 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 thats 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-a-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 +shall sit here, serving tea to friends." + +And I must borrow every changing +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? + + + + +Preludes + +I + +The winter evening settles down +With smell of steaks in passageways. +Six oclock. +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 beds 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 oclock +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. + + + +Rhapsody on a Windy Night + +Twelve oclock. +Along the reaches of the street +Held in a lunar synthesis, +Whispering lunar incantations +Dissolve the floors of the 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 toward 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 a child, automatic +Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. +I could see nothing behind that childs 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 garde aucune rancune, +She winks a feeble eye, +She smiles into corners. +She smoothes 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 old 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 oclock, +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. + + + +Morning at the Window + +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 +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. + + + +The Boston Evening Transcript + +The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript +Sway in the blind 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." + + + +Aunt Helen + +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. + + + +Cousin Nancy + +Miss Nancy Ellicot +Strode across the hills and broke them +Rode across the hills and broke them-- +The barren New England hills +Riding to hounds +Over the cow-pasture. + +Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked +And danced all the modern dances; +And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, +But they knew that it was modern. + +Upon the glazen shelves kept watch +Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, +The army of unalterable law." + + + +Mr. Apollinax + +When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States +His laughter tinkled among the teacups. +I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, +And of Priapus in the shrubbery +Gaping at the lady in the swing. +In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetahs +He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. +His laughter was submarine and profound +Like the old man of the seats +Hidden under coral islands +Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence, +Dropping from fingers of surf. +I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair, +Or grinning over a screen +With seaweed in its hair. +I heard the beat of centaurs hoofs over the hard turf +As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon. +"He is a charming man"--"But after all what did he mean?"-- +"He has pointed ears ... he must be unbalanced,"-- +"There was something he said that I might have challenged." +Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah +I remember a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon. + + + + +Hysteria + +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. + + + +Conversation Galante + +I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon +Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) +It may be Prester Johns 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 own 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 air indifferent and imperious +At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--" + And--"Are we then so serious?" + + + +La Figlia Che Piange + +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 turn +With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: +But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. + +So I would have had him leave, +So I would have had her stand and grieve, +So he would have left +As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised +As the mind deserts the body it has used. +I should find +Some way incomparably light and deft, +Some way we both should understand, +Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. + +She turned away, but with the autumn weather +Compelled my imagination many days, +Many days and many hours: +Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. +And I wonder how they should have been together! +I should have lost a gesture and a pose. +Sometimes these cogitations still amaze +The troubled midnight and the noons repose. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Prufrock/Other Observations, by Eliot + diff --git a/old/old/prfrk10.zip b/old/old/prfrk10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..91f39c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/prfrk10.zip |