【T.S. Eliot】
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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 etherised 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 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.
- T. S. Eliot
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/marker2.gifEliot】" TITLE="【T.S. Eliot】" /> Preludes
-
I - THE winter's evening settles down
- With smells 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 across your feet
- And newpapers from vacant lots;
- The showers beat
- On empty 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 the 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 is 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,
- And clasped the yellowed 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.
- T. S. Eliot
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/marker2.gifEliot】" TITLE="【T.S. Eliot】" /> 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 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 the 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 smooths 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 eau de 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.
- T. S. Eliot
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/marker2.gifEliot】" TITLE="【T.S. Eliot】" /> 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.
- T. S. Eliot
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/marker2.gifEliot】" TITLE="【T.S. Eliot】" /> La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping
Girl)
O quam te memorem virgo . . .
- 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 suprise --
- 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 a 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.
- T. S. Eliot
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/marker2.gifEliot】" TITLE="【T.S. Eliot】" /> Sweeney Among the
Nightingales
- "Alas, I am struck with a mortal blow
within."
[ -- Aeschylus, Agamemnon ] - APENECK Sweeney spreads his knees
- Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
- The zebra stripes along his jaw
- Swelling to maculate giraffe.
- The circles of the stormy moon
- Slide westward toward the River Plate,
- Death and the Raven drift above
- And Sweeney guards the hornéd gate.
- Gloomy Orion and the Dog
- Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
- The person in the Spanish cape
- Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees
- Slips and pulls the tablecloth
- Overturns a coffee cup,
- Reorganized upon the floor
- She yawns and draws a stocking up;
- The silent man in mocha brown
- Sprawls at the window sill and gapes;
- The waiter brings in oranges
- Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;
- The silent vertebrate in brown
- Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
- Rachel
née Rabinovitch - Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
- She and the lady in the cape
- Are suspect, thought to be in league;
- Therefore the man with heavy eyes
- Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
- Leaves the room and reappears
- Outside the window, leaning in,
- Branches of wistaria
- Circumscribe a golden grin;
- The host with someone indistinct
- Converses at the door apart,
- The nightingales are singing near
- The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
- And sang within the bloody wood
- When Agamemnon cried aloud,
- And let their liquid siftings fall
- To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.
- T.S. Eliot
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