The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I 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 I

  Collected and Uncollected Poems

  Edited by

  Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue

  Contents · Volume I

  Title Page

  This Edition

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Abbreviations and Symbols

  Collected Poems 1909–1962

  Prufrock and Other Observations

  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

  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

  Ash-Wednesday

  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

  A Song for Simeon

  Animula

  Marina

  The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

  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’

  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

  East Coker

  The Dry Salvages

  Little Gidding

  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

  Uncollected Poems

  A Lyric

  Song (‘If space and time, as sages say’)

  A Fable for Feasters

  To the Class of 1905

  Song (‘When we came home across the hill’)

  Before Morning

  Circe’s Palace

  On a Portrait

  Song (‘The moonflower opens to the moth’)

  Ballade of the Fox Dinner

  Nocturne

  First Caprice in North Cambridge

  Second Caprice in North Cambridge

  Opera

  Humouresque

  Convictions (Curtain Raiser)

  Spleen

  First Debate between the Body and Soul

  Easter: Sensations of April

  Ode (‘For the hour that is left us Fair Harvard, with thee’)

  Silence

  Mandarins

  Goldfish (Essence of Summer Magazines)

  Suite Clownesque

  The Triumph of Bullshit

  Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse

  Inside the gloom

  Entretien dans un parc

  Interlude: in a Bar

  Bacchus and Ariadne: 2nd Debate between the Body and Soul

  The smoke that gathers blue and sinks

  He said: this universe is very clever

  Interlude in London

  Ballade pour la grosse Lulu

  The Little Passion: From ‘An Agony in the Garret’

  The Burnt Dancer

  Oh little voices of the throats of men

  The Love Song of St. Sebastian

  Paysage Triste

  Afternoon

  Suppressed Complex

  In the Department Store

  Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think?

  The Death of Saint Narcissus

  To Helen

  After the turning of the inspired days

  I am the Resurrection and the Life

  So through the evening, through the violet air

  Introspection

  The Engine

  Hidden under the heron’s wing

  O lord, have patience

  In silent corridors of death

  Airs of Palestine, No. 2

  Petit Epître

  Tristan Corbière

  Ode (‘Tired. | Subterrene’)

  The Death of the Duchess

  Song (‘The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch’)

  Elegy

  Dirge

  Those are pearls that were his eyes. See!

  Exequy

  The Builders

  Mr. Pugstyles: The Elegant Pig

  Bellegarde

  The Anniversary

  A Valedictory

  Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats

  The Country Walk

  I am asked by my friend, the Man in White Spats

  A Proclamation

  A Practical Possum

  The Practical Cat

  The Jim Jum Bears

  The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs

  Billy M’Caw:
The Remarkable Parrot

  Grizabella: The Glamour Cat

  In Respect of Felines

  LINES Addressed to Geoffrey Faber Esquire, on his Return from a Voyage to the Bahamas, and the Parts about New Spain

  Morgan Tries Again

  Montpelier Row

  Let quacks, empirics, dolts debate

  AMAZ’D astronomers did late descry

  VERSES To Honour and Magnify Sir Geoffrey Faber Kt.;

  Long may this Glass endure, and brim with wine

  The gourmet cat was of course Cumberleylaude

  How the Tall Girl and I Play Together

  Sleeping Together

  How the Tall Girl’s Breasts Are

  Dedication II

  Love seeketh not Itself to please

  The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite

  Commentary

  Introduction

  “A Beginner in 1908”

  Prufrock and Other Observations

  Poems (1920)

  The Waste Land: Headnote

  The Waste Land: Commentary

  The Hollow Men

  Ash-Wednesday

  Ariel Poems

  Unfinished Poems

  Minor Poems

  Choruses from “The Rock”

  Four Quartets: Headnote

  Four Quartets: Commentary

  Occasional Verses

  Uncollected Poems

  “The End of All Our Exploring”

  Bibliography

  Index of Identifying Titles for Prose by T. S. Eliot

  Index to the Editorial Material

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  About the Authors

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  This Edition

  1. Arrangement of the Present Edition 2. The Waste Land: A Composite

  3. Titles 4. Text of the Poems 5. Spacing and Punctuation

  6. TSE on Treatments of his Poems

  1. ARRANGEMENT OF THE PRESENT EDITION

  This first volume opens with Collected Poems 1909–1962 as issued by T. S. Eliot shortly before his death. There follow the “Uncollected Poems”, which include those published in Poems Written in Early Youth and Inventions of the March Hare, as well as some poems from the manuscript Valerie’s Own Book (for which, see headnote to the Textual History, in Volume II). Also within this first volume is an editorial composite of the drafts of The Waste Land. The Commentary for all these poems then follows.

  The second volume contains the children’s book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Eliot’s only sustained translation, Anabasis, each followed by a Commentary. The second volume also includes, within contextual notes, three categories of private verses: “Other Verses”, Noctes Binanianæ and “Improper Rhymes”. The Textual History covers the Collected Poems 1909–1962, the Uncollected Poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Anabasis. Textual details of the Other Verses and Improper Rhymes are incorporated within those sections, and textual details of Noctes Binanianæ appear at the end of that section.

  2. THE WASTE LAND: A COMPOSITE

  The editorial composite of the drafts of The Waste Land (WLComposite) includes passages excised by Eliot, such as the description of a night on the town at the beginning of Part I, as well as others that were excised by Ezra Pound, such as Fresca’s waking at the beginning of Part III and the original long version of Part IV. Running to 678 lines, as opposed to the 433 of the published poem, the editorial composite has independent line-numbering given in bold, with equivalent line numbers from the published poem running alongside. Where appropriate, the numbering in the Commentary and Textual History appears in the form [III] 246 = 404.

  References to the facsimile edition of the drafts of The Waste Land give the page numbers of both the facsimile and its facing-page transcription: “Admonished by the sun’s inclining ray”, WLFacs 38/39.

  3. TITLES

  Many of Eliot’s poems originated as parts which had been published in other contexts, perhaps separately or in different combinations. What began as autonomous poems became sections and vice versa. Although a distinction has in the past been made between titles of short poems within a collection, given within quotation marks (“The Hollow Men”), and those published as volumes (Ash-Wednesday), this cannot hold firm in Eliot’s case. The first of the Four Quartets, for instance, was originally published within a volume, before appearing as a pamphlet; the others were published in New English Weekly and then as pamphlets before the four were collected. To distinguish one of these manifestations from another implies a change that is more than bibliographical, yet the great majority of references to Burnt Norton or Little Gidding are not specifically to any one manifestation. Nor is it always the case that a poem published separately is more substantial than one that is part of a collection: The Cultivation of Christmas Trees is not a more substantial poem than Gerontion.

  Placing a title within quotation marks rather than italicising it offers a certain kind of information (or makes a ruling), but in the vicinity of compacted quotations, that distinction is less useful to the reader than an immediate visual distinction between the words quoted and the identification of their source by title.

  When Valerie Eliot inaugurated the editing of Eliot in 1971 with the facsimile edition of The Waste Land, she used italics for titles whether of a short poem or a whole book, throughout her Introduction and Editorial Notes. The present edition follows this example and many other scholarly editions in italicising titles. Poems without authorial titles are referred to by italicising the first line (without additional capitals or quotation marks): The wind sprang up at four o’clock. The four poems entitled Song and the two entitled Ode are distinguished by supplying their opening words in brackets after the title.

  Other titles, by any author, are likewise italicised (with the exceptions of the Bible and its constituent books, Johnson’s Dictionary and The Oxford English Dictionary).

  4. TEXT OF THE POEMS

  The number of printings of Eliot’s poems is so large that first editions, editions published during Eliot’s lifetime and Faber editions necessarily take priority over reprints, posthumous editions and printings overseas or by other houses.

  Although Eliot was reluctant to revise after publication, examination has shown that even repeated impressions of the same edition diverge to an unexpected extent. He wrote to Djuna Barnes, 15 Oct 1936: “I have never succeeded in getting a first edition of one of my own books printed without some errors in it, and I sometimes find that when those are corrected new errors appear.” Printers did not always use authoritative texts—a reprint of the cheapest available, The Waste Land and Other Poems, was used by Giovanni Mardersteig to set the limited edition of the poem which sold at ten guineas—and the competence of typesetters varied considerably. So did Eliot’s vigilance as a proofreader. Once errors had been overlooked, they could be perpetuated, the most striking being the absence, from all editions, of the last line of part II of The Hollow Men. Sometimes a new reading was born, apparently because Eliot emended an error without reference to his previous text. Sometimes the Collected Poems was emended but not the Selected Poems (which was handled by different printers). Sometimes Eliot acknowledged that a text was inaccurate and said he would ask for it to be emended but failed to effect the change. In other cases, where accidental changes did not injure the sense, it is impossible to know whether he overlooked or acquiesced in them. Many date from the beginning of his career, and were never subsequently emended. A conservative approach has been adopted towards poems that were reprinted in his lifetime, with the present edition usually following 1963 (some exceptions are discussed in McCue 2012). On the same principle of preferring the final authorised text, the “Uncollected Poems” are given in their last known (or last decipherable) form.

  Apart from the addition of new items to Selected Essays, more changes were made in Anabasis after publication than in any other book of Eliot’s, in verse or prose. Published in 1930, i
t was revised, with St.-John Perse’s encouragement, in 1938, 1949 and 1959. The last of these revisions is given in the present edition, with the earlier texts being recorded in the Textual History in Volume II.

  At different times Eliot proposed several batches of emendations to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, some of them contradictory. The last authorially supervised text appears to be that of the second edition of the paperback, 1964 pbk.

  A striking editorial dilemma is what to do about an error in the dedication to Jean Verdenal which stands at the head of Prufrock and Other Observations, where the date of birth of Eliot’s friend appears as 1889 rather than the historically correct 1890. The dedication has stood for almost a century and it has been thought best not to alter it.

  5. SPACING AND PUNCTUATION

  In verse that is not in regular stanzas, a line-space that falls between pages may become invisible. If the text is then reset, this can lead to the loss of a space that was intended or the introduction of one that was not. Eliot wrote to Robert Beare, 10 Mar 1953, about such discrepancies in editions of his own work: “Occasionally a strophe has occurred in one edition at the end of the page with nothing to show on the next page that there is meant to be a break at that point. This has been overcome in the Penguin edition of my Selected Poems by an ingenious typographer who has indented the first line of every new strophe. I hope eventually to have my Collected Poems reset with this device.” (Such indents are not general in the Penguin series and appear to have been contrived especially to meet Eliot’s case.)

  The Penguin edition of 1948—Eliot’s first British Selected Poems, in the year of his Nobel Prize—indents the opening line of the second and subsequent “paragraphs” of each section of each poem, including single lines (excepting only The Waste Land [III] 311, “Burning”). When Selected Poems was retrieved by Faber and reissued, as a hardback, in 1954, these indents were inherited from the Penguin, which was followed page for page. They also appeared in Faber’s first paperback of the Selected Poems in 1961. The “device” was not completely successful, however, because it was not obvious whether it should be applied, for instance, to an isolated couplet such as

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.