The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Read online

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  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

  part a division of a poem marked by the author with a numeral

  quad-ruled printed with vertical and horizontal lines forming rectangles

  reciprocal of typescripts in which the two or more pages are a mixture of cognate ribbon copies and carbons, and which together would constitute the complete ribbon copy and the complete carbon

  scored marked with a vertical line in the margin

  section a division of the text of a book (“The section of ‘Occasional Poems’ was introduced in 1963”)

  separately constituting an entire book, pamphlet or broadsheet

  stepped arranged on more than one line; unless specified, each step beginning where the previous ends

  variant difference in the text; within TSE’s poems, unless otherwise specified, variants are differences from the main text of the present edition (see Textual History)

  widow a last word or short last line of a paragraph falling at the top of a page or column

  Abbreviations and Symbols

  ANQ American Notes and Queries

  AraVP Ara Vos Prec (Ovid Press, 1920)

  Ariel Faber Ariel Poem pamphlets (standard editions)

  Ash-Wed Ash-Wednesday (Faber, 1930)

  Beinecke Beinecke Library, Yale University

  BL British Library

  BN Burnt Norton pamphlet (1941)

  Composition FQ Helen Gardner, The Composition of “Four Quartets” (Faber, 1978)

  del. delete, deleted

  DS The Dry Salvages pamphlet (1941)

  EC East Coker pamphlet (1940)

  ed. edition, editor, edited (by)

  EinC Essays in Criticism

  ELH English Literary History

  ELN English Language Notes

  Fr. French

  Ger. German

  Houghton Houghton Library, Harvard University

  Inf. Inferno (Dante)

  King’s Modern Archive Centre, King’s College, Cambridge

  L. Latin

  LG Little Gidding pamphlet (1942)

  Magdalene Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge

  March Hare Inventions of the March Hare

  MLN Modern Language Notes

  MLR Modern Language Review

  ms manuscript

  N&Q Notes and Queries

  NEW New English Weekly

  NY New York

  NYPL New York Public Library

  OED The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989, with online updates)

  Oxf Bk of English Verse The Oxford Book of English Verse ed. A. T. Quiller-Couch (1900)

  PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

  Purg. Purgatory (Dante)

  repr. reprint,
reprinted

  RES Review of English Studies

  rev. revised

  Sw. Ag. Sweeney Agonistes (Faber, 1932)

  Texas Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  TLS Times Literary Supplement

  tr. translation, translated (by)

  ts typescript

  U. University, University of

  VE Valerie Eliot

  WLComposite composite text of the drafts of The Waste Land (present edition)

  WLFacs The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts including the Annotations of Ezra Pound ed. Valerie Eliot (1971)

  Abbreviated titles are detailed in the Index of Identifying Titles for Prose by T. S. Eliot. Abbreviated titles for TSE’s poetic works are detailed in Volume II, within the Textual History headnote, 3. KEY TO EDITIONS.

  Abbreviated titles for works by other authors are detailed in the Bibliography.

  Quotations from OED retain its abbreviations.

  SYMBOLS

  | line break, used in quotations from verse

  | | stanza break, used in quotations from verse

  informal ampersand, used in quotations from manuscript

  + “and in derived text” (of a reading within a poem, or a poem within editions)

  ¶ new paragraph

  > or < line space (used at the foot of a page in the poems)

  [ ] enclosing a date not specified by the author or publisher

  ^ insertion, used to indicate where additional material was to be placed

  · · · ellipsis (raised), used to indicate omissions made by the editors of the present edition

  … ellipsis (baseline), used in quotation where the ellipsis is present in the original

  . . ellipsis in entries quoted from OED

  ‖ used to separate different readings within textual history collations; see Volume II, Textual History headnote, 2. NOTATION

  to indicate a range of instances most of which, but not necessarily all, have a certain feature; see Volume II, Textual History headnote, 2. NOTATION

  Collected Poems 1909–1962

  (1963)

  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’io credessi che mia risposta fosse

  a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

  questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.

  Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

  [5]

  non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,

  senza 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,

  5

  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

  10

  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.

  15

  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,

  20

  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.

  <

  [Commentary I 374–81 · Textual History II 312-13]

  And indeed there will be time

  For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

  25

  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 meet;

  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; 30

  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.

  35

  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,

  40

  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!’)

  45

  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—

  50

  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?

  >

  [Commentary I 381–83 · Textual History II 313–15]

  55

  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

  60

  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!)

  65

  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?

  · · · · ·

  70

  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.

  · · · · ·

  [Commentary I 384–91 · Textual History II 315–17]

  75

  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,

  80

  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 th
e moment of my greatness flicker,

  85

  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,

  90

  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,

  95

  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,

  100

  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!

  105

  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,

  110

  That is not what I meant, at all.’

  · · · · ·

  [Commentary I 391–95 · Textual History II 317–18]