T. S. Eliot the Poems, Volume 2 Read online

  The Poems of T. S. Eliot

  Volume I

  Collected Poems 1909–1962

  Uncollected Poems

  The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite

  Commentary

  Volume II

  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

  Anabasis

  Other Verses

  Noctes Binanianæ

  Improper Rhymes

  Commentary

  Textual History

  The Poems of

  T. S. ELIOT

  Volume II

  Practical Cats and Further Verses

  Edited by

  Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue

  Contents · Volume II

  Title Page

  An Autobiographical Sketch

  Table of Dates

  Glossary

  Abbreviations and Symbols

  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

  Of the Awefull Battle of 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

  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats: Commentary

  Anabasis

  Chanson / Song (“Under the bronze leaves a colt was foaled”)

  Anabase / Anabasis

  Chanson / Song (“I have halted my horse by the tree of the doves”)

  Anabasis: Commentary

  Other Verses

  Fireside

  I thought I saw a elephant

  I thought I saw a banker’s clerk

  I thought I saw a brindle bull

  I thought I saw an antique ship

  I thought I saw a chimpanzee

  I thought I saw a little bird

  I thought I saw a kangaroo

  I thought I saw a pair of shoes

  I thought I saw a log fi-ER

  There was a young lady named Lu

  Hasty Ned, the Negro Hustler

  The fate of the Naughty Boy

  Eliot’s Floral Magazine

  Dear little flower, lift up your head

  Dear Charlotte, Hoping you are better

  There’s No One Left to Press my Pants

  Dearest Mary | Je suis très affairé

  Take, postman, take your little skiff

  O Postman, will you quickly run

  O Postman! take a little skiff

  Perhaps you will have been appal-

  My good friend Postman, do not falter

  Good Postman, leave this at the door

  Postman, propel thy feet

  O stalwart SUSSEX postman, who is

  Are you a-

  Invitation to all Pollicle Dogs & Jellicle Cats

  Cat’s Prologue

  Back head be full of aches

  Mr. Possum wishes that his name was Tristram Shandy

  Many thanks for your letter and card which details

  Now my Idea of Bliss

  This Lion which I have pourtrayed

  Whan Cam Ye Fra the Kirk?

  Poor Poony now is meek and mild

  AMONG the various Middle Classes

  What O! Epitaff

  An Exhortation

  DEAR ALISON, I fear I can-

  Chandos Clerihews

  Mr. Philip Mairet

  Mr. Maurice B. Reckitt

  Mr. Hilderic Cousens

  The Whale that leapt on Bredon

  Possum now wishes to explain his silence

  Be sure that Possums can’t refuse

  Miss Mary Trevelyan

  Put on your old grey corset

  Lift her up tenderly

  Clerihews II

  Mr. John Hayward

  Mr. Geoffrey Davies

  Clerihews III

  Mr. Geoffrey Faber

  Mr. Geoffrey Faber

  Mr. Geoffrey Faber’s

  Convalescents

  Convalescence II

  Mr. Geoffrey Faber

  When icicles hang by the wall

  An old man sat baldheaded, ’twas Christmas in Bombay

  The sage will refrain from sitting in with Archbishops

  Oh dae ye ken the turdie lads

  Speaking Piece, or Plum for Reciters

  His note is harsh and adenoid

  Wee Dolly Sayers

  Mr. Maurice Bowra

  The sudden unexpected gift

  Clerihews IV: Graham of Claverhouse

  I don’t want to see no Shakespeare or Napoleon

  Richards & Roberts were two merry men

  Your cablegram arrived too late

  He who in ceaseless labours took delight

  Dearest Mr. Groucho Marx

  Noctes Binanianæ

  How to Pick a Possum

  The O’Possum Strikes Back

  The Whale and the Elephant: A Fable

  Ode to a Roman Coot

  Three Sonnets

  GEOFFREY! who once did walk the earth like Jove

  CUST! whose loud martial oaths did once proclaim

  FABER! of thy great exploits ’twas not least

  Vers pour la Foulque

  Translation into English of “Verses for the Coot”

  Abschied zur Bina

  Noctes Binanianæ: Textual History

  Improper Rhymes

  In Letters to Conrad Aiken

  Now while Columbo and his men

  UP BOYS AND AT ’EM

  King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween

  King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween

  King Bolo’s big black bassturd kween

  K. B. b. b. b. k.

  In Letters to Ezra Pound

  One day Columbo went below

  King Bolo’s big black kukquheen

  For below a voice did answer, sweet in its youthful tone

  King Bolo’s big black basstart kuwheen

  In old Manila harbour, the Yankee wardogs lay

  King Bolo’s big black basstart queen

  ROAR Podesta ROAR, like any efficient druid, shanachie or scop

  In Letters to Bonamy Dobrée

  What was he doing, the Great God Wux?

  NOW Chris Columbo lived in Spain

  The Catalogue of Ships

  The Catalogue of Shipmates

  The Wedding Guest Here Beat his Breast

  AMERICA DISCOVER’D

  One Day Columbo & His Men

  DEIPNOSOPHISTIC

  The Dove dove down an oyster Dive

  One day Columbo & the Queen

  ’Tis WUX that makes the world go round

  King Bolo’s Big Black Bastard Queen

  The Columbiad

  Fragments

  Balls to you said Mrs. Sonnenschien

  There was a young lady named Ransome

  There was a young girl of Siberia

  COME, Glorious Rabbitt, how long wilt thou slumber

  That bird wych in the dark time of the yeerë

  Kierkegaard and Rilke shouting in the lava

  The Blameless Sister of Publicola

  Textual History

  Prufrock and Other Observations

  Poems (1920)

  The Waste Land

  The Hollow Men

  Ash-Wednesday

  Ariel Poems

  Unfinished Poems

  Minor Poems

  Choruses from �
�The Rock”

  Four Quartets

  Occasional Verses

  Uncollected Poems

  Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

  Anabasis

  Index to the Editorial Material in Volume II

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  About the Authors

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  An Autobiographical Sketch

  Sent to M. A. Frank-Duchesne, 5 November 1945

  My family, since its removal from England in 1669, has always been settled in or near Boston, Massachusetts. It has therefore been associated for some generations with the Unitarian sect and with Harvard University. My grandfather, as a minister of Unitarianism, went out to St. Louis, Missouri in 1837 to found the first Unitarian church west of the Mississippi River: but though he was extremely active in public life there, and amongst other activities founded a local university, Boston remains the family foyer. The seventeenth-century background is of course strongly Puritan–Calvinistic.

  I spent my early years in St. Louis, was later at school in Massachusetts and at Harvard. My interests there were chiefly literary, and as an undergraduate at Harvard I began to write verse under the influence of Baudelaire and Laforgue, and read widely amongst other French poetry. On taking my degree at Harvard I spent a year in Paris, following lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, and fell under the influence of Bergson. I returned to Harvard to study philosophy, with the intention of making my career in that pursuit. I also took up the study of Sanskrit and Pali, as Indian thought had always had a strong attraction for me; and I thought of proceeding to the study of comparative religion. At this period the influence of Bergson was succeeded by the influence of F. H. Bradley. Consequently, I spent a year at Oxford working on Plato and Aristotle under Bradley’s greatest disciple, Harold Joachim. But for the outbreak of war in 1914 I should probably have spent some time also in Germany studying Greek philosophy; and I was attracted at that time by the work of such philosophers at Husserl and Meinong.

  I had never been able to get any of my verse published; and the first recognition I received was from Mr. Ezra Pound, whom I met in London in 1915. This encouragement turned my mind to poetry again; and on ending my year at Oxford I remained in London. For a time I was a schoolmaster, then for eight years in a bank in the City. During this period my interests were exclusively literary, though I occasionally reviewed philosophical books. My first book of verse appeared in 1917, and my first volume of literary essays in 1920. I joined the newly formed publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer (since, Faber & Faber) in 1925.

  I had always had a lively interest in anthropology and the study of religions. The early work of Maritain made a deep impression on me, and I began reading discursively in theology. In 1927 I was received into the Church of England. My interest in Christian sociology had developed since that time, partly through association with the Christendom group of writers, and partly through association with the activities of Dr. J. H. Oldham. In more recent years still, I have interested myself in political philosophy, and have returned to the reading of Edmund Burke. I was naturalised as a British subject in 1927. My chief function is to write verse, and verse plays, and to publish the poetry of other writers: everything else I do is a Nebenfach [ancillary study]. My theological standpoint is that of what is called the “Anglo-Catholic” movement in the Church of England.

  Table of Dates

  1888 26 SEPT: Thomas Stearns Eliot, seventh child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Eliot (née Stearns), born in St. Louis, Missouri.

  1897 JAN–FEB: Composes first poem, about the sadness of having to start school again every Monday morning.

  1898 Day boy at Smith Academy.

  1899 Composes fourteen numbers of “A Weekly Magazine”, The Fireside.

  1904 Visits the St. Louis World’s Fair.

  1905 Stories and verses printed in Smith Academy Record. Writes and recites the valedictory poem To the Class of 1905. Begins at Milton Academy.

  1906 Begins at Harvard.

  1907 Publishes in the Harvard Advocate. Meets Conrad Aiken.

  1908 Reads Arthur Symons’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature.

  1910 Writes and recites the class ode for graduation (“For the hour that is left us Fair Harvard, with thee”). Studies in Paris, attending Bergson’s lectures. Meets Jean Verdenal.

  1911 APR: Visits London, before returning to Harvard for doctoral work in philosophy.

  1912 Assistant in Philosophy. Meets Emily Hale.

  1913 Reads F. H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality. President of Harvard Philosophy Club.

  1914 Meets Bertrand Russell. Awarded Sheldon Fellowship to spend a year at Oxford. Passes through London en route to a summer school in Marburg, Germany. Briefly prevented from leaving Germany when it declares war on Russia. 22 SEPT: Meets Ezra Pound. Studies at Merton College, Oxford.

  1915 JUNE: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock published in Poetry (Chicago). 26 JUNE: Marries Vivien Haigh-Wood. JULY: Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night published in Blast. 24 JULY: Sails for America. 21 AUG: Leaves for England. SEPT: Portrait of a Lady published in Others. Teaches at High Wycombe Grammar School.

  1916 Teaches at Highgate Junior School. Begins work as extension lecturer, giving courses for adults on French Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern Literature and Elizabethan Literature.

  1917 Assistant editor of the Egoist. Joins Lloyds Bank. JUNE: Prufrock and Other Observations published.

  1918 Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry published anonymously in New York.

  1919 7 JAN: Death of TSE’s father. MAY: Poems published by the Hogarth Press. First review for the Times Literary Supplement.

  1920 FEB: Ara Vos Prec published by the Ovid Press; Poems published by Knopf, NY. 15 AUG: Meets Joyce in Paris. NOV: The Sacred Wood published.

  1921 Leave of absence from Lloyds Bank for treatment for a nervous breakdown. OCT–NOV: in Margate, writing The Waste Land. NOV–DEC: Completes draft of the poem while in Lausanne for treatment with Dr. Roger Vittoz.

  1922 JAN: Pound and Eliot work together on The Waste Land, first in person in Paris, then in correspondence. OCT: Publication of The Waste Land in the Criterion, a journal edited by TSE until its closure in 1939 in the face of the Second World War. In New York, the poem is published in the Dial, and TSE is awarded the Dial Prize of $2,000. DEC: The Waste Land published in volume form by Boni & Liveright, NY, with the Hogarth Press edition following in Britain in SEPT 1923.

  1925 Joins Faber & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber). NOV: Faber publishes Poems 1909–1925, which includes The Hollow Men.

  1926 Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. Rejected as candidate for a Research Fellowship at All Souls, Oxford.

  1927 JUNE: Baptised, and then confirmed the following day. Becomes godfather to Tom Faber. Journey of the Magi published (first of TSE’s Ariel Poems). Naturalised as a British citizen.

  1928 NOV: Preface to For Lancelot Andrewes declares that “The general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion.”

  1929 10 SEPT: Death of TSE’s mother. 27 SEPT: Dante.

  1930 APR: Ash-Wednesday. MAY: Anabasis.

  1932 SEPT: Selected Essays 1917–1932. DEC: Sweeney Agonistes.

  1932–33 Lectures in America, including Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard and Page-Barbour Lectures at U. Virginia. Earliest recordings. Having decided not to return to Vivien, TSE lodges with his priest and with friends until the end of the Second World War.

  1934 FEB: After Strange Gods (the Page-Barbour Lectures). MAY: The Rock, a pageant for the Forty-Five Churches Fund, staged at Sadler’s Wells.

  1935 MAY: Murder in the Cathedral performed at Canterbury Cathedral.

  1936 APR: Collected Poems 1909–1935 includes Burnt Norton.

  1937 MAY: Visits Austria and (briefly) Germany, on holiday.

  1938 Vivien Eliot committed t
o an asylum.

  1939 MAR: The Family Reunion produced at the Westminster Theatre. OCT: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

  1940 MAR: East Coker.

  1941 FEB: The Dry Salvages.

  1942 OCT: Little Gidding.

  1943 MAY: Four Quartets published in New York, with the British edition following in OCT 1944.

  1946 Sets up home in a flat shared with John Hayward. JULY: Visits Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington.

  1947 JAN: Death of Vivien Eliot. APR: Flies to the United States. 5 MAY: TSE’s brother Henry dies.

  1948 JULY: Selected Poems published by Penguin. NOV: Nobel Prize.

  1949 The Cocktail Party produced at the Edinburgh Festival.

  1953 The Confidential Clerk produced at the Edinburgh Festival.

  1954 The Cultivation of Christmas Trees published in Faber’s second series of Ariel Poems.

  1957 10 JAN: Marries Esmé Valerie Fletcher.

  1958 The Elder Statesman produced at the Edinburgh Festival.

  1963 Collected Poems 1909–1962 includes Four Quartets.

  1964 JAN: Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.

  1965 4 JAN: Dies.

  Glossary

  blind-ruled impressed with rules but without ink

  braced with added brackets or square brackets not in themselves intended as punctuation (often for further consideration)

  cognate ribbon and carbon copies from the same act of typing and therefore textually identical unless annotated or edited (see reciprocal)

  draft preliminary manuscript or typescript

  excised leaves leaves removed, for instance from the March Hare Notebook, and not accompanying the original

  eye-skip omission caused by eye of copyist or compositor jumping to a later repetition of words (such as “The nymphs are departed”, The Waste Land [III] 175, 179)

  indented (of an individual line) set to the right of the left-hand margin of the poem

  inset (of a group of lines) set to the right of the left-hand margin of the poem

  laid in of extraneous leaves introduced into a manuscript volume such as the March Hare Notebook but not bound as part of it

  orphan the first line of a paragraph set as the last line of a page or column

  overtyped typed in the same position so as to supersede what originally appeared