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  • Title: The Waste Land
  • Author: T. S. Eliot
  • May, 1998 [Etext #1321]
  • Last Updated: November 18, 2017
  • Language: English
  • Character set encoding: UTF-8
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  • THE WASTE LAND
  • By T. S. Eliot
  • CONTENTS
  • 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”
  • “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
  • vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
  • Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.”
  • _For Ezra Pound
  • il miglior fabbro_
  • 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
  • Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  • A little life with dried tubers.
  • Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  • With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
  • And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
  • And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
  • Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
  • And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
  • My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
  • And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
  • Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
  • In the mountains, there you feel free.
  • I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
  • What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
  • Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20
  • You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
  • A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
  • And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
  • And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
  • There is shadow under this red rock,
  • (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
  • And I will show you something different from either
  • Your shadow at morning striding behind you
  • Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
  • I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30
  • _Frisch weht der Wind
  • Der Heimat zu
  • Mein Irisch Kind,
  • Wo weilest du?_
  • “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
  • “They called me the hyacinth girl.”
  • —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
  • Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
  • Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
  • Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
  • Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
  • _Oed’ und leer das Meer_.
  • Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
  • Had a bad cold, nevertheless
  • Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
  • With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
  • Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
  • (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
  • Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
  • The lady of situations. 50
  • Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
  • And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
  • Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
  • Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
  • The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
  • I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
  • Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
  • Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
  • One must be so careful these days.
  • Unreal City, 60
  • Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
  • A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
  • I had not thought death had undone so many.
  • Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
  • And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
  • Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
  • To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
  • With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
  • There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
  • “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70
  • “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
  • “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
  • “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
  • “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
  • “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
  • “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
  • 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 80
  • (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
  • Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
  • Reflecting light upon the table as
  • The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
  • From satin cases poured in rich profusion.
  • In vials of ivory and coloured glass
  • Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
  • Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
  • And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
  • That freshened from the window, these ascended 90
  • In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
  • Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
  • Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
  • Huge sea-wood fed with copper
  • Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
  • In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
  • Above the antique mantel was displayed
  • As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
  • The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
  • So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100
  • Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
  • And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
  • “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
  • And other withered stumps of time
  • Were told upon the walls; staring forms
  • Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
  • Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
  • Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
  • Spread out in fiery points
  • Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 110
  • “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
  • “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
  • “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
  • “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
  • I think we are in rats’ alley
  • Where the dead men lost their bones.
  • “What is that noise?”
  • The wind under the door.
  • “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
  • Nothing again nothing. 120
  • “Do
  • “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
  • “Nothing?”
  • I remember
  • Those are pearls that were his eyes.
  • “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
  • But
  • O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
  • It’s so elegant
  • So intelligent 130
  • “What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
  • I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
  • “With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
  • “What shall we ever do?”
  • The hot water at ten.
  • And if it rains, a closed car at four.
  • And we shall play a game of chess,
  • Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
  • When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
  • I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, 140
  • HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
  • Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
  • He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
  • To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
  • You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
  • He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
  • And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
  • He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
  • And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
  • Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. 150
  • Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
  • HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
  • If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
  • Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
  • But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
  • You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
  • (And her only thirty-one.)
  • I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
  • It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
  • (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 160
  • The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
  • You _are_ a proper fool, I said.
  • Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
  • What you get married for if you don’t want children?
  • HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
  • Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
  • And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
  • HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
  • HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
  • Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170
  • Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
  • Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
  • 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 softly, till I end my song.
  • The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
  • Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
  • Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
  • And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180
  • Departed, have left no addresses.
  • By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
  • Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
  • Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
  • But at my back in a cold blast I hear
  • The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
  • A rat crept softly through the vegetation
  • Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
  • While I was fishing in the dull canal
  • On a winter evening round behind the gashouse 190
  • Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
  • And on the king my father’s death before him.
  • White bodies naked on the low damp ground
  • And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
  • Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
  • But at my back from time to time I hear
  • The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
  • Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
  • O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
  • And on her daughter 200
  • They wash their feet in soda water
  • _Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!_
  • Twit twit twit
  • Jug jug jug jug jug jug
  • So rudely forc’d.
  • Tereu
  • Unreal City
  • Under the brown fog of a winter noon
  • Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
  • Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210
  • C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
  • Asked me in demotic French
  • To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
  • Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
  • At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
  • Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
  • Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
  • I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
  • Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
  • At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220
  • Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
  • The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
  • Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
  • Out of the window perilously spread
  • Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
  • On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
  • Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
  • I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
  • Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
  • I too awaited the expected guest. 230
  • He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
  • A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
  • One of the low on whom assurance sits
  • As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
  • The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
  • The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
  • Endeavours to engage her in caresses
  • Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
  • Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
  • Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240
  • His vanity requires no response,
  • And makes a welcome of indifference.
  • (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
  • Enacted on this same divan or bed;
  • I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
  • And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
  • Bestows one final patronising kiss,
  • And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
  • She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
  • Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250
  • Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
  • “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
  • When lovely woman stoops to folly and
  • Paces about her room again, alone,
  • She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
  • And puts a record on the gramophone.
  • “This music crept by me upon the waters”
  • And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
  • O City city, I can sometimes hear
  • Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260
  • The pleasant whining of a mandoline
  • And a clatter and a chatter from within
  • Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
  • Of Magnus Martyr hold
  • Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
  • The river sweats
  • Oil and tar
  • The barges drift
  • With the turning tide
  • Red sails 270
  • Wide
  • To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
  • The barges wash
  • Drifting logs
  • Down Greenwich reach
  • Past the Isle of Dogs.
  • Weialala leia
  • Wallala leialala
  • Elizabeth and Leicester
  • Beating oars 280
  • The stern was formed
  • A gilded shell
  • Red and gold
  • The brisk swell
  • Rippled both shores
  • Southwest wind
  • Carried down stream
  • The peal of bells
  • White towers
  • Weialala leia 290
  • Wallala leialala
  • “Trams and dusty trees.
  • Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
  • Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
  • Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
  • “My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
  • Under my feet. After the event
  • He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.
  • I made no comment. What should I resent?”
  • “On Margate Sands. 300
  • I can connect
  • Nothing with nothing.
  • The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
  • My people humble people who expect
  • Nothing.”
  • la la
  • To Carthage then I came
  • Burning burning burning burning
  • O Lord Thou pluckest me out
  • O Lord Thou pluckest 310
  • burning
  • IV. DEATH BY WATER
  • Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
  • Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
  • And the profit and loss.
  • A current under sea
  • Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
  • He passed the stages of his age and youth
  • Entering the whirlpool.
  • Gentile or Jew
  • O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
  • Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
  • 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 reverberation
  • Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  • He who was living is now dead
  • We who were living are now dying
  • With a little patience 330
  • Here is no water but only rock
  • Rock and no water and the sandy road
  • The road winding above among the mountains
  • Which are mountains of rock without water
  • If there were water we should stop and drink
  • Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
  • Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
  • If there were only water amongst the rock
  • Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
  • Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
  • There is not even silence in the mountains
  • But dry sterile thunder without rain
  • There is not even solitude in the mountains
  • But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
  • From doors of mudcracked houses
  • If there were water
  • And no rock
  • If there were rock
  • And also water
  • And water 350
  • A spring
  • A pool among the rock
  • If there were the sound of water only
  • Not the cicada
  • And dry grass singing
  • But sound of water over a rock
  • Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
  • Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
  • But there is no water
  • Who is the third who walks always beside you?
  • When I count, there are only you and I together 360
  • But when I look ahead up the white road
  • There is always another one walking beside you
  • Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
  • I do not know whether a man or a woman
  • —But who is that on the other side of you?
  • What is that sound high in the air
  • Murmur of maternal lamentation
  • Who are those hooded hordes swarming
  • Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
  • Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
  • What is the city over the mountains
  • Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
  • Falling towers
  • Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
  • Vienna London
  • Unreal
  • A woman drew her long black hair out tight
  • And fiddled whisper music on those strings
  • And bats with baby faces in the violet light
  • Whistled, and beat their wings 380
  • And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
  • And upside down in air were towers
  • Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
  • And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
  • In this decayed hole among the mountains
  • In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  • Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  • There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
  • It has no windows, and the door swings,
  • Dry bones can harm no one. 390
  • Only a cock stood on the rooftree
  • Co co rico co co rico
  • In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
  • Bringing rain
  • Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
  • Waited for rain, while the black clouds
  • Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
  • The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
  • Then spoke the thunder
  • DA 400
  • _Datta:_ what have we given?
  • My friend, blood shaking my heart
  • The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
  • Which an age of prudence can never retract
  • By this, and this only, we have existed
  • Which is not to be found in our obituaries
  • Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
  • Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
  • In our empty rooms
  • DA 410
  • _Dayadhvam:_ I have heard the key
  • Turn in the door once and turn once only
  • We think of the key, each in his prison
  • Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
  • Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
  • Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
  • DA
  • _Damyata:_ The boat responded
  • Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
  • The sea was calm, your heart would have responded 420
  • Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
  • To controlling hands
  • I sat upon the shore
  • Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
  • Shall I at least set my lands in order?
  • London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
  • _Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
  • Quando fiam ceu chelidon_ — O swallow swallow
  • _Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie_
  • These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
  • Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
  • Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
  • Shantih shantih shantih
  • Line 415 aetherial] aethereal
  • Line 428 ceu] uti— Editor
  • NOTES ON “THE WASTE LAND”
  • Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the
  • incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L.
  • Weston’s book on the Grail legend: _From Ritual to Romance_
  • (Macmillan, Cambridge) Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss
  • Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much
  • better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the
  • great interest of the book itself) to any who think such
  • elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of
  • anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced
  • our generation profoundly; I mean _The Golden Bough_; I have used
  • especially the two volumes _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_. Anyone who is
  • acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the
  • poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
  • I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
  • Line 20. Cf. _Ezekiel_ 2:1.
  • 23. Cf. _Ecclesiastes_ 12:5.
  • 31. V. _Tristan und Isolde_, i, verses 5-8.
  • 42. Id. iii, verse 24.
  • 46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot
  • pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my
  • own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional
  • pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in
  • my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate
  • him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to
  • Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear
  • later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is
  • executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic
  • member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with
  • the Fisher King himself.
  • 60. Cf. Baudelaire:
  • “Fourmillante cité, cité; pleine de rêves,
  • Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”
  • 63. Cf. _Inferno_, iii. 55-7.
  • “si lunga tratta
  • di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto
  • che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”
  • 64. Cf. _Inferno_, iv. 25-7:
  • “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
  • “non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,
  • “che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”
  • 68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
  • 74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s _White Devil_.
  • 76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to _Fleurs du Mal_.
  • II. A GAME OF CHESS
  • 77. Cf. _Antony and Cleopatra_, II. ii., l. 190.
  • 92. Laquearia. V. _Aeneid_, I. 726:
  • dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
  • incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.
  • 98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, _Paradise Lost_, iv. 140.
  • 99. V. Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, vi, Philomela.
  • 100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.
  • 115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.
  • 118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”
  • 126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
  • 138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s _Women beware Women_.
  • III. THE FIRE SERMON
  • 176. V. Spenser, _Prothalamion_.
  • 192. Cf. _The Tempest_, I. ii.
  • 196. Cf. Marvell, _To His Coy Mistress_.
  • 197. Cf. Day, _Parliament of Bees_:
  • “When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
  • “A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
  • “Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
  • “Where all shall see her naked skin . . .”
  • 199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these
  • lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
  • 202. V. Verlaine, _Parsifal_.
  • 210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance
  • free to London”; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed
  • to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
  • 210. “Carriage and insurance free”] “cost, insurance and
  • freight”-Editor.
  • 218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a
  • “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem,
  • uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of
  • currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not
  • wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women
  • are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias
  • _sees_, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage
  • from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:
  • ‘. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
  • Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’
  • Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
  • Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
  • Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
  • Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
  • Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
  • Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
  • Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’
  • Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
  • Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem
  • Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
  • Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
  • Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
  • Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
  • Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
  • At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
  • Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
  • Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
  • 221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had
  • in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at
  • nightfall.
  • 253. V. Goldsmith, the song in _The Vicar of Wakefield_.
  • 257. V. _The Tempest_, as above.
  • 264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of
  • the finest among Wren’s interiors. See _The Proposed Demolition
  • of Nineteen City Churches_ (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).
  • 266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here.
  • From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn.
  • V. _Götterdämmerung_, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.
  • 279. V. Froude, _Elizabeth_, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De
  • Quadra to Philip of Spain:
  • “In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the
  • river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the
  • poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord
  • Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why
  • they should not be married if the queen pleased.”
  • 293. Cf. _Purgatorio_, v. 133:
  • “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
  • Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”
  • 307. V. St. Augustine’s _Confessions_: “to Carthage then I
  • came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”
  • 308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which
  • corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which
  • these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry
  • Clarke Warren’s _Buddhism in Translation_ (Harvard Oriental
  • Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist
  • studies in the Occident.
  • 309. From St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ again. The collocation
  • of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
  • as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
  • V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
  • In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:
  • the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
  • (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
  • 357. This is _Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii_, the hermit-thrush
  • which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (_Handbook of
  • Birds of Eastern North America_) “it is most at home in secluded
  • woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not
  • remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of
  • tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its
  • “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.
  • 360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one
  • of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one
  • of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers,
  • at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion
  • that there was _one more member_ than could actually be counted.
  • 366-76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, _Blick ins Chaos_:
  • “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten
  • Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn
  • am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch
  • wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger
  • beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”
  • 401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize,
  • control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found
  • in the _Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad_, 5, 1. A translation is found
  • in Deussen’s _Sechzig Upanishads des Veda_, p. 489.
  • 407. Cf. Webster, _The White Devil_, v. vi:
  • “. . . they’ll remarry
  • Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
  • Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.”
  • 411. Cf. _Inferno_, xxxiii. 46:
  • “ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto
  • all’orribile torre.”
  • Also F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, p. 346:
  • “My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my
  • thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls
  • within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with
  • all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others
  • which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which
  • appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and
  • private to that soul.”
  • 424. V. Weston, From _Ritual to Romance_; chapter on the Fisher
  • King.
  • 427. V. _Purgatorio_, xxvi. 148.
  • “‘Ara vos prec per aquella valor
  • ‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
  • ‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’
  • Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”
  • 428. V. _Pervigilium Veneris_. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and
  • III.
  • 429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet _El Desdichado_.
  • 431. V. Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_.
  • 433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an
  • Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble
  • translation of the content of this word.
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