The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  [Poem I 89 · Textual History II 427]

  II 15 My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions: “Racine or Donne looked into a good deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tracts”, The Metaphysical Poets (1921). strings of my eyes: OED: “The ‘eyestrings’ were formerly supposed to break or crack at death or loss of sight.” For Donne, “Our eye-beames twisted, and did thred | Our eyes, upon one double string” (The Extasie 7–8), see note to Burnt Norton I 28, “unseen eyebeam crossed”. indigestible portions: TSE had quoted with approval Marianne Moore’s words “portions of the food it could not eat” (My Apish Cousins) in Marianne Moore (1923). portions: see note to II 52–54. For Wanley’s “Parcel Resurrection” (glossed by TSE as “partial”) see headnote to II.

  II 16 reject: OED 3a: “To refuse (something offered)”; 4a: “To expel from the mouth or stomach”, quoting Paradise Lost X 567: “Bitter Ashes, which th’offended taste | With spattering noise rejected.” Pound to TSE, 12 Apr 1940: “mebbe you is TOUGH. The leopards done tried to ate you and then bent their goddam tin teeth. At least I had the helluva argument as to whether ‘reject’ meant spit out. I sez trown back; I sez as to food it CAN mean THAT the animal just leaves it on the plate or desert sand and DONT TRY to eat it. No sez the lady [Dorothy Pound], it means spit it out. Waaal, I sez, I will ASK the author. No, she sez, DONT. however …” TSE: “the dark throat which will not reject them”, The Dry Salvages IV 13. For “rejects a proffered morsel”, see note to The Dry Salvages I 20–21.

  II 17 In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown: Dante, Vita Nuova [II] tr. Rossetti: “the same wonderful lady appeared to me dressed all in pure white”, The Early Italian Poets 225. TSE: “your gown is white | And against your gown your braided hair”, The Love Song of St. Sebastian 14–15 (Smith 1985). contemplation: “I do not think that contemplation can be correctly defined as ‘the attitude of the spectator’. In the theological sense, it is an activity; and I think that in any sense it implies activity. We may contemplate taking certain steps: that is a deliberative activity. We may ‘contemplate’ a sunset; but that that implies some suggestion of slight spiritual activity I think is indicated by the fact that we do not ordinarily ‘contemplate’ a football match · · · contemplation is an encounter”, Letter from T. S. Eliot 28 Apr 1944, a paper for The Moot.

  II 19 I am forgotten: Psalm 31: 12: “I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind.”

  II 23, 48 the bones sang: Herbert: “the broken bones may joy, | And tune together in a well-set song, | Full of his praises, | Who dead men raises”, Repentance 32–35. Yeats: “‘O cruel death, give three things back,’ | Sang a bone upon the shore”, Three Things (Ariel Poem, 1929) 1–2.

  II 24 burden of the grasshopper: Ecclesiastes 12: 5: “and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home” (Williamson 174). For an allusion to the succeeding biblical verse, see note to The Waste Land [V] 384. Further, OED “burden” 10: “the refrain or chorus of a song”. Purg. XXVIII 16–18: “singing, with full gladness they welcomed the first breezes within the leaves, which were murmuring the burden to their songs”.

  II 25, 28 Lady of silences · · · Rose of memory: e. e. cummings: “Lady of Silence | from the winsome cage of | thy body | rose”, IX in XLI Poems (Dial Press, 1925: the year cummings won the Dial prize).

  II 26 Calm and distressed: to Stephen Spender, 1 July 1935: “As for ‘calmness’, I often refer to a phrase of Goethe’s which you no doubt know. Someone complimented him on his serenity. Yes, he said, but it is a serenity which has to be composed afresh every morning.”

  II 28 Rose: Hayward in his 1936 proof: “Rosa mystica = Mary—‘that Rose in which the Word Divine made itself flesh’—Dante Paradiso” (XXIII 73–74). Litany of the Blessed Virgin, to be recited on its own or after praying the rosary, especially during the month of May; see note to The Hollow Men IV 13.

  [Poem I 89 · Textual History II 427]

  II 28–29 memory · · · forgetfulness: in Dante’s Earthly Paradise, the water pours down the Mount of Purgatory as the rivers Lethe and Eunoë: “On this side it descends with a virtue which takes from men the memory of sin; on the other it restores the memory of every good deed”, Purg. XXVIII 127–29 (Jain 1991).

  II 29 Rose of forgetfulness: Psalm 88: 12: “land of forgetfulness”. TSE: “Waters of tenderness | Sealed springs of devotion”, The Hollow Men I 15 ^ 16 variant.

  II 31 reposeful: OED 2: “Full of repose”. 1: “Obs. In whom confidence is or may be placed” (last citation 1644, but the idiom “to repose trust” remains).

  II 32–33 The single Rose | Is now the Garden: Dante sees Heaven as a white rose, a “great flower adorned with so many leaves” forming a whole “garden” (Paradiso XXXI 10–11, 97). “Multifoliate rose”, The Hollow Men IV 13. Evelyn Underhill: “watering of the garden of the soul, is a cultivation of this one flower—this Rosa Mystica which has its root in God”, Mysticism II vi (Joshua Richards, personal communication).

  II 32 ^ 33 variant With worm-eaten petals: “pitted as if worm-eaten”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 121 (Clark Lecture IV). “a society like ours, worm-eaten with Liberalism”, After Strange Gods 13 (Ricks 228). “It seems to me that all of us, so far as we attach ourselves to created objects and surrender our wills to temporal ends, are eaten by the same worm”, Nightwood (1937) Introduction.

  II 32–38 variant Rose | With worm-eaten petals · · · love · · · love · · · love: Blake: “O Rose · · · worm · · · love”, The Sick Rose.

  II 34–38 Where all loves end | Terminate torment | Of love unsatisfied | The greater torment | Of love satisfied: Corbière: “Borne de l’envie!—Toi qui viens assouvir la faim inassouvie!” [Boundary of desire!—You who come to satisfy the hunger that is unsatisfied], Litanie du sommeil [The Litany of Sleep] 54–55. TSE on Inferno V: “To have lost all recollected delight would have been, for Francesca, either loss of humanity or relief from damnation. The ecstasy, with the present thrill at the remembrance of it, is a part of the torture. Francesca is · · · damned; and it is a part of damnation to experience desires that we can no longer gratify. For in Dante’s Hell souls are not deadened · · · they are actually in the greatest torment of which each is capable. ‘E il modo ancor m’offende’”, Dante (1920). (Last phrase of the tercet Inf. V 100–102: “Love, which is quickly caught in gentle heart, took him with the fair body of which I was bereft; and the manner still afflicts me.”) 1 John 4: 18: “perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment”. TSE: “Who then devised the torment? Love”, Little Gidding IV 8. For “the only love that is wholly satisfactory and final”, see letter to Geoffrey Faber, 10 May 1936, in note to the second epigraph to Sweeney Agonistes.

  II 35 Terminate: pronounced as the verb by TSE in his recordings. OED also, ppl. a. pron. termin’et, “Limited, bounded · · · having a definite limit”, with Daniel’s paraphrase of Ecclesiasticus 41 (1639): “What if the uncertaine Date of Mortalls in ten years be Terminate”.

  II 35–36, 39–40] Hayward in his 1936 proof: “St Bernard’s hymn to Virgin, Paradiso XXX” (for XXXIII).

  [Poem I 89–90 · Textual History II 427]

  II 36–38 love unsatisfied · · · love satisfied: Hegel: “Belief · · · has in fact become the same as enlightenment · · · the difference is merely that the one is enlightenment satisfied, while belief is enlightenment unsatisfied”, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie (1910) (Donoghue 181–82). Bradley: “To love unsatisfied the world is a mystery, a mystery which love satisfied seems to comprehend. The latter is wrong only because it cannot be content without thinking itself right”, Appearance and Reality, Preface. TSE double-scored both margins.

  II 39 End of the endless: Chapman: “THE END OF ALL THE ENDLESS WORKS OF HOMER”, concluding line of “The Hymns of Homer”. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “Chapman’s Minor Poems”.

&n
bsp; II 39–40 End of the endless | Journey to no end: St. Bernard to Dante: “‘That thou mayest consummate thy journey perfectly’”, Paradiso XXXI 94. Bradley: “What does endless mean? Not the mere negation of end, because a mere negation is nothing at all and infinite would thus = 0. The endless is something positive; it means a positive quantity which has no end”, Ethical Studies Essay II. See note to IV 6 on “infinite and eternal”.

  II 42 inconclusible: OED: rare. “Not capable of being concluded; endless”, with this and only one previous citation, “That inconclusible Controversie”, 1660. Pronounced inconcluzible in TSE’s recordings.

  II 48 bones · · · scattered: Purg. XXXI 50–52: “membra · · · in terra sparte” [members · · · scattered to dust] (Praz 368).

  II 50 Under a tree in the cool of the day: Genesis 3: 8: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” In his 1933 recording, TSE says “Under the tree”.

  II 52–54 This is the land which ye | Shall divide by lot · · · We have our inheritance: Ezekiel 48: 29: “This is the land which ye shall divide by lot unto the tribes of Israel for inheritance, and these are their portions, saith the Lord God” (TSE: “portions” II 15).

  III

  The turnings of the stair in this part correspond to the divisions of Dante’s hill of Purgatory (Matthiessen 66–67). TSE: “mounting the saints’ stair”, A Song for Simeon 28.

  Unadopted title SOM DE L’ESCALINA: Purg. XXVI 145–47: “Ara vos prec, per aquella valor | que vos guida al som de l’escalina, | sovegna vos a temps de mon dolor” [“Now I pray you, by that Goodness which guideth you to the summit of the stairway, be mindful in due time of my pain”]. For TSE’s returns to this passage about Arnaut Daniel, see note to unadopted title for II and note to title Ara Vos Prec in headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC.

  III 1 At the first turning of the second stair: Emerson: “At the first mounting of the giant stairs”, The Adirondacs 63.

  [Poem I 90–91 · Textual History II 427]

  III 1–5 the second stair | I turned and saw below · · · Under the vapour in the fetid air | Struggling with the devil of the stairs: Whitman: “My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs · · · I mount and mount. | | Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, | Afar down · · · through the lethargic mist · · · the fetid carbon”, Song of Myself [44] 1149–55 (Musgrove 55–56). Under the vapour in the fetid air: Inf. VI 10–12: “acqua tinta, e neve | per l’aer tenebroso si riversa; | pute la terra che questo riceve” [turbid water, and snow, pour down through the darksome air; the ground, on which it falls, emits a putrid smell].

  III 1, 3, 6 stair · · · twisted · · · banister · · · despair: Herbert Read to TSE, 16 Nov 1929, acknowledging a proof of the projected quarto ed. of Ash-Wednesday: “The only detail that worries me is the clash of the false true rhymes of ‘banister’, ‘stairs’ ‘despair’ · · · I’m not sure, too, that I like ‘twisted’ and ‘banister’ in the same line”. TSE replied, 18 Nov: “I am not sure about that line; the point had not struck me. I don’t think the poem is really first rate, but I do think that it just does escape insincerity, somehow.”

  III 5–6 the devil of the stairs who wears · · · despair: Paradise Lost III 523–24: “The stairs were then let down, whether to dare | The Fiend” (Ricks 225). the devil · · · who wears | The deceitful face of hope: “the demon of doubt which is inseparable from the spirit of belief”, The “Pensées” of Pascal (1931). “hope would be hope for the wrong thing”, East Coker III 24 (see note). To Fred Clarke, Good Friday [11 Apr] 1941: “I have to warn myself against being either optimistic or pessimistic: for in either mood I am probably hoping or despairing about only human schemes: and if there is a brighter future preparing it must almost necessarily be invisible.”

  III 11 toothed gullet of an agèd shark: Macbeth IV i: “maw and gulf | Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark” (Grover Smith 315). Swinburne: “shark-toothed and serpentine-curled”, Hymn to Proserpine 53 (see note to Marina 6). André Salmon: “les gueules de requins” [sharks’ mouths, or gullets], Anvers [Antwerp] 12.

  III 13 the fig’s fruit: Dante, tr. E. H. Plumptre: “’mid the sour crab’s kind | It is not meet the sweet fig’s fruit to see”, Hell XV 65–66, The Commedia and Canzoniere: A New Translation (1886).

  III 14–16 pasture scene · · · broadbacked · · · green · · · the maytime · · · flute: Emerson: “May · · · the broad-backed hills · · · the pipes of the trees · · · green”, May-Day 212–26. On Mary and the month of May, see note to II 28.

  III 17–19 Blown hair: Beaumont and Fletcher: “mine hair blown with the wind”, The Maid’s Tragedy (see note on epigraph to Sweeney Erect). “the white hair of the waves blown back”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 127. brown hair over the mouth blown: Archibald MacLeish: “Front against front, not hair blown | Dark over eyes in a dream and the mouth gone”, Land’s End I in Criterion July 1927 (Crawford 187). (TSE to MacLeish, 25 May 1927: “we should like to have you on our list · · · Congratulations on the poem I am publishing.”)

  III 19 Distraction · · · stops and steps of the mind: F. E. Brightman, introduction to Lancelot Andrewes’s Preces Privatæ: “steps and stages of the movement.” See note to Little Gidding II 92–93 for more of this paragraph as given in Lancelot Andrewes (1926), where TSE quotes two of Donne’s sermons on distractions from prayer. See notes to Burnt Norton III 10–12, 14 and V 13–22.

  III 23–24 Lord, I am not worthy | | but speak the word only: Matthew 8: 8: “The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.”

  [Poem I 91 · Textual History II 427–28]

  IV

  At the end of this Part in his 1936 proof Hayward wrote the liturgical colours: “violet—penance; green—hope; white—purity; blue—celestial”. See note to IV 1–4. Hope Mirrlees: “The Virgin sits in her garden; | She wears the blue habit · · · Lillies bloom, blue, green, and pink”, Paris (1919).

  Unadopted title VESTITA DI COLOR DI FIAMMA: Purg. XXX 31–33: “sopra candido vel, cinta d’oliva, | donna m’apparve, sotto verde manto, | vestita di color di fiamma viva” [olive-crowned over a white veil, a lady appeared to me, clad, under a green mantle, with hue of living flame], Dante’s first sight of Beatrice in the Commedia. TSE quoted XXX 31–48 in Dante (1929) II, giving this phrase as “clad under a green mantle, in colour of living flame.”

  IV 1–4 violet · · · green · · · white and blue: the 274 pages of small type in English Liturgical Colours by William St. John Hope and E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley (1918) demonstrate the complexity of their subject. Atchley’s table of “liturgical use of colours in England up to the middle of the 16th century” in Essays on Ceremonial ed. Vernon Staley (1904) gives red and secondarily ash-colour for Ash-Wednesday; white for Feasts of our Lady and predominant from Easter to Whitsunday; “blue and white” for Michaelmas. Elsewhere: “according to some, violet and black were to be held identical for liturgical purposes”, 104; “green has generally been held to symbolise fruitfulness” 167; “It was with the significance of hope that Dante attired the Angels of Purgatory in green”, 173 (citing Purg. VIII 28–30).

  IV 1–3, 12 Who walked between the violet and the violet | Who walked between | The various ranks of varied green · · · that walk between: Purg. XXVIII 36, 40–41: “la gran variazion dei freschi mai · · · una donna soletta, che si gia | cantando ed iscegliendo fior da fiore” [the great diversity of the tender blossoms · · · a lady solitary, who went along singing, and culling flower after flower] (Praz 368–69). Swinburne: “She walked between the blossom and the grass”, Laus Veneris 309, one of the Swinburne poems that TSE said a volume of selections “should certainly contain”, Swinburne as Poet (1920). Writing to Marquis W. Childs, 8 Aug 1930, TSE recalled h
is nursemaid Annie Dunne taking him “to the little Catholic church · · · when she went to make her devotions; the spring violets”, American Literature and the American Language 29 (Bush 146–47).

  IV 3–4 green | Going in white and blue: “How life goes well in pink and green!” Mandarins 4 15.

  IV 4 in white and blue, in Mary’s colour: see note to Burnt Norton IV 3 “clematis” (virgin’s bower). J. Wickham Legg: “in all the liturgical books that I have come across, white is invariably given as the colour of Blessed Mary. To this there is no exception; but it appears that by a special licence the Spanish dioceses, and also some churches of Naples, are allowed to wear blue for feasts of the B. V. M.”, Essays Liturgical and Historical (1917) 162.

  [Poem I 92 · Textual History II 428]

  IV 6 eternal dolour: inscription on the Gate of Hell: “per me si va nell’ eterno dolore” [through me the way into the eternal pain], Inf. III 2. eternal (variant perpetual): TSE on revisions in the Prayer Book: “The two words to which we would call attention again are infinite and eternal, where they have been substituted for incomprehensible and everlasting · · · The word eternal evades all difficulties of time · · · when fences are down the cattle will roam, including two vagrant beasts named infinite and eternal, words which will wander so far, the fence of meaning being down, that they will cease to belong anywhere”, A Commentary in Criterion May 1927. dolour: pronounced doller in TSE’s recordings.