The Waste Land

by T.S. Eliot

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse 
oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
 Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.
                                       For Ezra Pound 
                                       il miglio fabbro


I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding   
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  
Memory and desire, stirring  
Dull roots with spring rain.     
Winter kept us warm, covering            
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding     
A little life with dried tubers.     
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee  
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,  
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,      
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.    
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.  
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,    
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,   
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,     
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.  
In the mountains, there you feel free.   
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.   
 
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow   
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,    
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,    
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,   
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only    
There is shadow under this red rock,      
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),     
And I will show you something different from either  
Your shadow at morning striding behind you   
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;    
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.    

        Frisch weht der Wind     
        Der Heimat zu,   
        Mein Irisch Kind,    
        Wo weilest du?   
        
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;      
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,      
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.    
Öd’ und leer das Meer.   
 
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,   
Had a bad cold, nevertheless     
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,    
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.   
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.      
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,      
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.      
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!   
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!      
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”   
 
II. A GAME OF CHESS

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    
(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;    
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    
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,    
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  
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  
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    
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.     
                                              “Do    
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember    
Nothing?”    
        I remember   
                Those are pearls that were his eyes.     
“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   
 
“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.  
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,   
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS 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,  
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.    
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.  
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS 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.    
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.)   
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 ITS TIME     
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 ITS TIME     
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME     
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.     
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.   
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.    
 
III. THE FIRE SERMON

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.    
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;    
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    
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.   
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.    
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  
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.    
Tereu    
 
Unreal City  
Under the brown fog of a winter noon     
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant    
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants     
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,     
Asked me in demotic French   
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel   
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.     
 
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back   
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    
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,   
The typist home at tea-time, 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,  
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.    
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,   
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;    
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  
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)    
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,  
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…    
 
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,   
Hardly aware of her departed lover;  
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,   
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,  
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    
Wide     
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.     
The barges wash  
Drifting logs    
Down Greenwich reach     
Past the Isle of Dogs.   
            Weialala leia    
            Wallala leialala     
Elizabeth and Leicester  
Beating oars     
The stern was formed     
A gilded shell   
Red and gold     
The brisk swell  
Rippled both shores  
South-west wind  
Carried down stream  
The peal of bells    
White towers     
            Weialala leia    
            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.“  
 
“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.   
I can connect    
Nothing with nothing.    
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.  
My people humble people who expect   
Nothing.”    
 
      la la  
 
To Carthage then I came  
 
Burning burning burning burning  
O Lord Thou pluckest me out  
O Lord Thou pluckest     
 
burning  
 
IV. DEATH BY WATER

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    
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,   
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.     
 
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torch-light red on sweaty faces    
After the frosty silence in the gardens  
After the agony in stony places  
The shouting and the crying  
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   
 
Here is no water but only rock   
Rock and no water and the sandy road     
The road winding above among the mountains   
Which are mountains of rock without water    
If there were water we should stop and drink     
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think    
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand    
If there were only water amongst the rock    
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit    
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit   
There is not even silence in the mountains   
But dry sterile thunder without rain     
There is not even solitude in the mountains  
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl     
From doors of mud-cracked houses
                                If there were water  
And no rock  
If there were rock   
And also water   
And water    
A spring     
A pool among the rock    
If there were the sound of water only    
Not the cicada   
And dry grass singing    
But sound of water over a rock   
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees  
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop   
But there is no water    
 
Who is the third who walks always beside you?    
When I count, there are only you and I together  
But when I look ahead up the white road  
There is always another one walking beside you   
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded  
I do not know whether a man or a woman   
—But who is that on the other side of you?   
 
What is that sound high in the air   
Murmur of maternal lamentation   
Who are those hooded hordes swarming     
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth  
Ringed by the flat horizon only  
What is the city over the mountains  
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air  
Falling towers   
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria  
Vienna London    
Unreal   
 
A woman drew her long black hair out tight   
And fiddled whisper music on those strings   
And bats with baby faces in the violet light     
Whistled, and beat their wings   
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall  
And upside down in air were towers   
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours   
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.    
 
In this decayed hole among the mountains     
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing     
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel    
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.     
It has no windows, and the door swings,  
Dry bones can harm no one.   
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree   
Co co rico co co rico    
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust    
Bringing rain    
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves    
Waited for rain, while the black clouds  
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.     
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.  
Then spoke the thunder   
DA   
Datta: what have we given?   
My friend, blood shaking my heart    
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender     
Which an age of prudence can never retract   
By this, and this only, we have existed  
Which is not to be found in our obituaries   
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider   
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor  
In our empty rooms   
DA   
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key  
Turn in the door once and turn once only     
We think of the key, each in his prison  
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison  
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours     
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus  
DA   
Damyata: The boat responded  
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar  
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded    
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient    
To controlling hands     
 
                      I sat upon the shore   
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me   
Shall I at least set my lands in order?  
 
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down  
 
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina     
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow   
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie   
These fragments I have shored against my ruins   
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.    
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.   
 
      Shantih    shantih    shantih  

NOTES

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Attis Adonis Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel II, i.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

31. V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses 5–8.

42. Id. III, verse 24.

46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire: “Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rèves, Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”

63. Cf. Inferno, III. 55–57: “si lunga tratta di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”

64. Cf. Inferno, IV. 25–27: “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, “non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, “che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

II. A GAME OF CHESS

77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II., ii. l. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726: dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 140.

99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”

126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii.

196. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees: “When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear, “A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring “Actaeon to Diana in the spring, “Where all shall see her naked skin…“

197. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken; it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance free to London”; and the Bill of Lading, etc. were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest: …Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est Quam, quae contingit maribus’, dixisse, ‘voluptas.’ Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota. Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’ Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet, Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago. Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte, At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257. V. The Tempest, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches: (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III, i: The Rhinedaughters.

279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain: “In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

293. Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133: “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; “Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”

308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the occident.

309. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book), and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.… Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequaled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: “…they’ll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.”

411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46: “ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto all’orribile torre.” Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346. “My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.… In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”

424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148. “‘Ara vos prec, per aquella valor ‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina, ‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’ Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”

428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is a feeble translation of the content of this word.