T. S. ELIOT
The Complete Poems
and Plays
CONTENTS
Title Page
COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1962
PRUFROCK, 1917
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
POEMS, 1920
Gerontion
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Sweeney Erect
A Cooking Egg
Le Directeur
Mélange Adultère de Tout
Lune de Miel
The Hippopotamus
Dans le Restaurant
Whispers of Immortality
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
THE WASTE LAND, 1922
I. The Burial of the Dead
II. A Game of Chess
III. The Fire Sermon
IV. Death by Water
V. What the Thunder said
Notes on the Waste Land
THE HOLLOW MEN, 1925
ASH-WEDNESDAY, 1930
I. Because I do not hope to turn again
II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
III. At the first turning of the second stair
IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet
V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
VI. Although I do not hope to turn again
ARIEL POEMS
Journey of the Magi, 1927
A Song for Simeon, 1928
Animula, 1929
Marina, 1930
The Cultivation of Christmas Trees, 1954
UNFINISHED POEMS
Sweeney Agonistes
Fragment of a Prologue
Fragment of an Agon
Coriolan
I. Triumphal March
II. Difficulties of a Statesman
MINOR POEMS
Eyes that last I saw in tears
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
Five-Finger Exercises
I. Lines to a Persian Cat
II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier
III. Lines to a Duck in the Park
IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.
V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg
Landscapes
I. New Hampshire
II. Virginia
III. Usk
IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe
V. Cape Ann
Lines for an Old Man
CHORUSES FROM ‘THE ROCK’, 1934
I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven
II. Thus your fathers were made
III. The Word of the lord came unto me, saying
IV. There are those who would build the Temple
V. O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart
VI. It is hard for those who have never known persecution
VII. In the beginning GOD created the world
VIII. O Father we welcome your words
IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
FOUR QUARTETS
Burnt Norton, 1935
East Coker, 1940
The Dry Salvages, 1941
Little Gidding, 1942
OCCASIONAL VERSES
Defence of the Islands
A Note on War Poetry
To the Indians who Died in Africa
To Walter de la Mare
A Dedication to my Wife
OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
The Naming of Cats
The Old Gumbie Cat
Growltiger’s Last Stand
The Rum Tum Tugger
The Song of the Jellicles
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
Old Deuteronomy
The Pekes and the Pollicles
Mr. Mistoffelees
Macavity: the Mystery Cat
Gus: the Theatre Cat
Bustopher Jones: the Cat about Town
Skimbleshanks: the Railway Cat
The Ad-dressing of Cats
Cat Morgan Introduces Himself
PLAYS
Murder in the Cathedral
The Family Reunion
The Cocktail Party
The Confidential Clerk
The Elder Statesman
APPENDIX
POEMS WRITTEN IN EARLY YOUTH
A Fable for Feasters
A Lyric: ‘If Time and Space, as Sages say’
Song: ‘If space and time, as sages say’
At Graduation 1905
Song: ‘When we came home across the hill’
Before Morning
Circe’s Palace
On a Portrait
Song: ‘The moonflower opens to the moth’
Nocturne
Humouresque (after J. Laforgue)
Spleen
Ode
The Death of Saint Narcissus
Index of First Lines of Poems
About the Author
Also by T. S. Eliot
Copyright
COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1962
PRUFROCK
and Other Observations
1917
For Jean Verdenal, 1889–1915
mort aux Dardanelles
Or puoi la quantitate
comprender dell’amor ch’a te mi scalda,
quando dismento nostra vanitate,
trattando l’ombre come cosa salda.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’i’ credesse che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria sanza più scosse;
ma però che già mai di questo fondo
non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,
sanza 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 mee
t;
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 towards 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