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
Prison and
palace 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 not 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 mudcracked
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 lamination
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 rooftree
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, aethereal 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 uti 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
(turn the page)
-T.S. Eliot-
The Waste Land
Sources:
First publication date 1922.
Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/eliot01.html
CST Approved.