Read Complete Poems and Plays Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
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Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
320
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
330
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
340
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
350
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
360
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
— But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
370
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
380
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
390
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400
Then spoke the thunder
D
A
Datta:
what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410
In our empty rooms
D
A
Dayadhvam:
I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
D
A
Damyata:
The boat responded
420
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi
s’ascose
nel foco
che gli
affina
Quando fiam
uti
chelidon
— O swallow swallow
430
Le
Prince
d’Aquitaine
à
la
tour
abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend:
From
Ritual
to
Romance
(Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted. Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean
The
Golden
Bough;
I have used especially the two volumes
Adonis,
Attis,
Osiris.
Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel II, i.
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.
31. V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses 5–8.
42. Id. III, verse 24.
46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own
convenience.
The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples of Emmaus in Part V. The
Phoenician
Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the ‘crowds of people’, and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.
60. Cf. Baudelaire:
‘Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,
‘Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.’
63. Cf. Inferno III, 55–57:
si lunga tratta
di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto
che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.
64. Cf. Inferno IV, 25–27:
Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
non avea pianto ma’ che di sospiri
che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.
68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
74. Cf. the Dirge in Wesbster’s
White
Devil.
76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to
Fleurs
du
Mal
.
77. Cf.
Antony
and
Cleopatra,
II, ii, l. 190.
92. Laquearia. V.
Aeneid,
I, 726:
dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.
98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton,
Paradise
Lost,
IV, 140.
99. V. Ovid,
Metamorphoses,
VI, Philomela.
100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.
115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
118. Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’
126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s
Women
beware
Women.
176. V. Spenser,
Prothalamion.
192. Cf.
The
Tempest,
I, ii.
196. Cf. Marvell,
To
His
Coy
Mistress.
197. Cf. Day,
Parliament
of
Bees:
‘When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
‘A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
‘Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
‘Where all shall see her naked skin …’
199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
202. V. Verlaine,
Parsifal.
210. The currants were quoted at a price ‘cost insurance and freight to London’; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character’, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias
sees,
in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:
… Cum Iunone iocos et ‘maior vestra profecto est