receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. 45so 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 55The 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 60In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river8 65Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose9 Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
5. The traditional British scarecrow is made from two sticks tied in the form of a cross (the vertical one stuck in the ground), dressed in cast-off clothes, and sometimes draped with dead vermin. 6. Perhaps a reference to Dante's meeting with Beatrice after he has crossed the river Lethe. There reminded of his sins, he is allowed to proceed to Paradise (Purgatorio 30).
7. Cf. The Waste Land, line 22. 8. Dante's Acheron, which encircles hell, and the Congo of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. 9. The image of heaven in Dante's Paradiso 32.
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TH E HOLLO W ME N / 231 1 V 70Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.1 75Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act2 Falls the Shadow3 For Thine is the Kingdom4 soBetween the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long 8590Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the 95 This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang hut a whimper. 1924-25 1925
1. Parodic version of the children's rhyme ending 'Here we go round the mulberry bush / On a cold and frosty morning.' 2. Cf. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar 2.1.63?5: 'Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.'
3. Cf. Ernest Dowson's 'Now sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae,' lines 1?2: 'Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine / There fell thy shadow, Cynara!' 4. Cf. The Lord's Prayer.
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2312 / T. S. ELIOT
Journey of the Magi1
'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.'2 And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
10 And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
is And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying
20 That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky.'
25 And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued
30 And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down
35 This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
40 We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
1. One of the wise men who came from the east weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, to Jerusalem to do homage to the infant Jesus in solstitio bmmali, 'the very dead of winter.' ' (Matthew 2.1?12) is recalling in old age the mean-3. The 'three trees' suggest the three crosses, with ing of the experience. Jesus crucified on the center one; the men 'dicing 2. Adapted from a passage in a 1622 Christmas for pieces of silver' (line 27) suggest the soldiers sermon by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes: 'A cold dicing for Jesus' garments and Judas's betrayal of coming they had of it at this time of the year, just him for thirty pieces of silver; the empty wineskins the worst time of the year to take a journey, and recall one of Jesus' parables of old and new (Mark specially a long journey in. The ways deep, the 2.22).
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LITTL E GIDDIN G / 231 3 With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. 1927
FROM FOUR QUARTETS
Little Gidding1
I
Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal0 though sodden towards sundown, eternal, everlasting Suspended in time, between pole and tropic, When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
5 The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart's heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon. And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
10 Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire2 In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell Or smell of living thing. This is the springtime But not in
