The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 Read online

  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