The Waste Land And Other Poems

By T.S. Eliot

“For many successive generations now, ‘The Waste Land,’ ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ and ‘Four Quartets’ have continued to excited readers and to inspire young poets. Teenagers still discover his work with a thrill of wonder and recognition. Eliot’s unique power, his understanding of interrelated beauty and squalor, freshness and despair, survives academic fashions, survives all interpretations, survives even his own dicta and formulations. He is one of the great poets.”  —Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate and author of Singing School“An exalted nightmare, one of the great poems of the 20th century.”  —Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry) and A Poet’s Glossary

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780547546407

T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He moved to England in 1914 and published his first book of poems in 1917. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 and is best known for his masterpiece The Waste Land. Eliot died in 1965.

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Contents

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Cover Page

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Preludes

Gerontion

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’

Ash-Wednesday

Journey of the Magi

Marina

Landscapes

I. New Hampshire

II. Virginia

III. USK

Two Choruses from ‘The Rock’

About the Author

Copyright 1934 by Harcourt Brace & Company

Copyright 1930 by T. S. Eliot

Copyright renewed 1962, 1958 by T. S. Eliot

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-15-694877-7 (Harvest; pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-547-54640-7

v4.0316

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse

a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

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,

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 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;

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!’)