Free The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one 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;
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 18 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’ 19
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street. 20
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 21
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 22 hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
    The river sweats 23
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 24
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
    Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
     
     
    ‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew 25
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
     
    ‘My feet are at Moorgate, 26 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. 27
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
    la la
     
     
    To Carthage 28 then I came
     
    Burning burning burning burning 29
O Lord Thou pluckest me out 30
O Lord Thou pluckest
     
    burning

IV. Death by Water 1
    Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea 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 1
    After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places 2
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 3
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 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 4 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? 5
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 6
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are