Complete Poems and Plays by T. S. Eliot Read Free Book Online

sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.’ Its ‘water-dripping song’ is justly celebrated.
    360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.
    366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: ‘Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.’
    401. ‘Datta, dayadhvam, damyata’ (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka — Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.
    407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi:
    ‘… they’ll remarry
    Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
    Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’
    411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46:
    ‘ed io senti chiavar l’uscio di sotto
    all’ orribile torre.’
    Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 306. ‘My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it…. In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.’
    424. V. Weston: From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.
    427. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.
    ‘“Ara vos prec per aquella valor
    “que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
    “sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor.”
    Poi s’ascose nel foco che li affina.’
    428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
    429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.
    431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.
    433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is our equivalent to this word.

THE HOLLOW MEN
1925
     
Mistah Kurtz — he dead.
     
     

The Hollow Men
     
    A penny for the Old Guy
    I
     
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
     
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
     
    Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
     
    II
     
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
     
    Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer —
     
    Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
     
    III
     
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
     
    Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
     
    IV
     
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the