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Prayer Before Birth
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born; console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall...
Still Falls the Rain
Still Falls the Rain
(The Raids, 1940, Night and Dawn)
Still falls the Rain -
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross...
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Parts 4 and 5)
IV
These fought in any case,
and some believing
pro domo, in any case...
Died some, pro patria,
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came...
Canto 45
Canto 45
With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church...
Canto 49
Canto 49
For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds...
Canto 1
Canto I
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with...
Letter Written on a Ferry
Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound,
I am surprised to see
that the ocean is still going on.
Now I am going back
and I have ripped my hand
from your hand as I said I...
Ringing the Bells
I think this is perhaps confessional in its own way and yet it’s a voice in another way. By voice I mean someone else’s – a kind of monologue.
Ringing the Bells
And this is the way they ring
the bells...
With Mercy for the Greedy
With Mercy for the Greedy
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,...
Her Kind
Her Kind
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-...
I, Too
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at...
Anyone lived in a pretty how town
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for...
Next to of course god America
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should...
The Conjuror
The Conjuror
Arriving early at the cemetery
For 'the one o'clock', we looked around
At the last sparks of other people's grief,
The flowers fading back into the ground.
A card inscribed...
The Lost Woman
My mother went with no more warning
Than a bright voice and a bad pain.
Home from school on a June morning
And where the brook goes under the lane
I saw the back of a shocking white
...
The Waste Land Part V - What the Thunder said
V. What the Thunder said
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...
The Waste Land Part IV - Death by Water
IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As...
The Waste Land Part III - The Fire Sermon
III. The Fire Sermon
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run...
The Waste Land Part II - A Game of Chess
II. A Game of Chess
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out...
The Waste Land Part I - The Burial of the Dead
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering...
Four Quartets - Extract
I
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
...
Filling Station
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
- this little filling station,
oil soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father...
At the Fish Houses
At the Fish Houses
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his...
Crusoe in England
Crusoe in England
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a...
Roosters
Roosters
At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock
just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo
off in...
Song of the Old Mother
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long...
The Fiddler of Dooney
When I play on my fiddle in Dooney.
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My brother is priest in Kilvarnet,
My cousin in Mocharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their...
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade....
Gloriana Dying
Gloriana Dying
None shall gainsay me. I will lie on the floor.
Hitherto from horseback, throne, balcony,
I have looked down upon your looking up.
Those sands are run. Now I reverse the glass...
Journey of the Magi
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled,...
The Fall of Rome
The Fall of Rome
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
...
One Evening
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch...
The Shield of Achilles
The Shield of Achilles
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had...
Parliament Hill Fields
I imagine the landscape of Parliament Hill Fields in London seen by a person overwhelmed by an emotion so powerful as to colour and distort the scenery. The speaker here is caught between the old and the new year, between...
The Applicant
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no?...
