艾略特T.S. Eliot |
Frisch weht der Wind | |
Der Heimat zu. | |
Mein Irisch Kind, | |
Wo weilest du? |
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; | 35 |
'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. | |
Od' und leer das Meer. |
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, | |
Had a bad cold, nevertheless | |
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, | 45 |
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. | 55 |
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. | 65 |
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! | 75 |
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!' |
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; | 85 |
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, | 95 |
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 | 105 |
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. |
'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 | 115 |
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. | 125 |
'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 to-morrow? | |
'What shall we ever do?' | |
The hot water at ten. | 135 |
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, | 145 |
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. | 155 |
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 alright, 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 | 165 |
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. |
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. | 175 |
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 | 185 |
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. | 195 |
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. | 205 |
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 | 215 |
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, | 225 |
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, | 235 |
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 | 245 |
And walked among the lowest of the dead.) | |
Bestows on 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 smoothes her hair with automatic hand, | 255 |
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 | 275 |
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 | 285 |
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.' | 295 |
'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.' | 305 |
Burning burning burning burning | |
O Lord Thou pluckest me out | |
O Lord Thou pluckest |
PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, | |
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell | |
And the profit and loss. | |
A current under sea | 315 |
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. |
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 | 325 |
Prison and place 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 |