It is interesting that the first draft of this section of
The Waste Land was much longer, and included a Melville-esque account of a failed polar
expedition, ending when the ship founders on ice.
Ezra Pound basically asked T.S. Eliot to axe the whole thing. We are thus left with the above text, even though the first draft is still available in a Dover edition (including a photostatic reproduction of the typed manuscript with Pound's and Vivian's notes).
From this first draft, which I find very beautiful, let me quote this two verses:
And if another knows, I know I know not,
Who only know that there is no more noise now.