The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 102
IV 8 made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs: Baudelaire, of the goddess Cybele: “Fait couler le rocher et fleurir le désert” [makes the rocks gush water and the desert flower], Bohémiens en voyage [Wandering Gypsies] 12 (Southam).
IV 10 blue of larkspur: Edgar Lee Masters: “skies are blue | As larkspur”, The Conversation in Songs and Satires (1916) (McCue 2014a). larkspur: OED a: “Any plant of the genus Delphinium”; b: “The blue colour characteristic of the larkspur”. Both citations for b. are from 1927, including “Larkspur, a pastel blue slightly inclining to the mauve” (Daily Express). TSE to his mother, 13 June 1926: “Our little garden is doing well, the rosebushes and lupins and larkspur will soon be in flower, and I wish Vivien was here to see them.” (When printed as a volume in 1930 and 1933, Ash-Wednesday was dedicated “TO | MY WIFE”.)
IV 11 Sovegna vos: see note to unadopted title for III.
IV 13–14 restoring · · · between sleep and waking: “hesitating at the angles of stairs, | And between sleeping and waking”, Murder in the Cathedral I. between sleep and waking: Swinburne: “Between a sleep and a sleep”, Atalanta in Calydon 361 (see note to Eyes that last I saw in dreams 1–15).
IV 15 White light folded, sheathed about her, folded: Paradiso XXX 49–51: “così mi circonfulse luce viva, | e lasciommi fasciato di tal velo | del suo fulgor, che nulla m’appariva” [so there shone around me a living light, leaving me swathed in such a web of its glow that naught appeared to me].
IV 16–29 ts2 [1–4] the flowers rejoice · · · one who has heard the unheard, seen the unseen: “The unheard music · · · the unseen eyebeam · · · the roses | Had the look of flowers that are looked at”, Burnt Norton I 27–29.
IV 16–29 ts2 [2–6] blessed face · · · the unheard · · · the unseen · · · grace: “grace dissolved in place | | What is this face · · · this face · · · that unspoken”, Marina 16–17, 29, 31. See note to V 18–19.
IV 16–29 ts2 [5] Desire chills: “chilled delirium · · · when the sense has cooled”, Gerontion 62–63. and the hidden thoughts outrace · · · grace: Carroll: “And the mome raths outgrabe”, Jabberwocky in Through the Looking-Glass ch. I.
IV 16–29 ts2 [7] Poi s’ascose nel foco: Purg. XXVI 148; see The Waste Land [V] 427 and note, and for TSE’s returns to this passage of Dante see note to title Ara Vos Prec in headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC.
[Poem I 92 · Textual History II 428–29]
IV 18–19, 26 Redeem | The time · · · Redeem the time: Ephesians 5: 15–16: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Colossians 4: 5: “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.” TSE in 1931: “The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved”, Thoughts After Lambeth (1931) final paragraph (Unger in Unger ed. 366). “If · · · All time is unredeemable”, Burnt Norton I 4–5.
IV 20 the higher dream: “We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions—a practice now relegated to the aberrant and the uneducated—was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming”, Dante (1929) I. Dante’s “‘Divine Pageant’ · · · belongs to the world of what I call the high dream, and the modern world seems capable only of the low dream”, Dante (1929) II.
IV 21 jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse: Purg. XXIX 106–108: “The space within the four of them contained a car triumphal, upon two wheels, which came drawn at the neck of a grifon” (Praz 368). Conrad Aiken: “White unicorns come gravely down to the water · · · white horses drawing a small white hearse · · · The gilded face and jewelled eyes of her”, Senlin: A Biography (1918) I iii, iv, vi (Grover Smith 315, Schneider 121–22). jewelled unicorns: after Virginia Woolf wrote anonymously “Thus, in spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion, we still read the lesser Elizabethans, still find ourselves adventuring in the land of the jeweller and the unicorn” (Notes on an Elizabethan Play in TLS 5 Mar 1925), TSE wrote to her, [8? Mar 1925]: “I recognised your imagination in the Times à propos of unicorns and jewellers.” jewelled: pronounced jew‑well’d in TSE’s recordings.
IV 21–22 unicorns · · · The silent sister: TSE: “the point about unicorns is that they can only be tamed by a pure virgin · · · If there was a bright light the unicorn would dematerialise”, “Synthetic Unicorn” by George McTavish, reader’s report (1935) (“Virgin”, II 10; “White light”, IV 15). David Jones’s illustration for The Cultivation of Christmas Trees incorporates a unicorn.
IV 22 The silent sister veiled: Dante’s first sight of Beatrice, Purg. XXX 31–32: “olive-crowned over a white veil, a lady appeared to me” (see note to unadopted title for IV, Vestita di color di fiamma). TSE to Colin Still, 13 May 1930: “although my recently published poem (‘Ash Wednesday’) is a deliberate modern Vita Nuova, I was not fully aware of the significance of the ‘veiled lady’ until I read your book. My ‘veiled lady’ was, as a matter of fact, a direct employment of a dream I had, together with the yew trees and the garden god.” Still’s Shakespeare’s Mystery Play: A Study of “The Tempest” (1921) compares Shakespeare’s Miranda to Dante’s veiled Beatrice, and to the personification of Truth and Wisdom in the Jewish Kabbalah. sister: Baudelaire: “Mon enfant, mon soeur” [My child, my sister], first line of L’Invitation au voyage [The Invitation to the Voyage]. TSE, quoting this line and the next two: “The word soeur here is not, in my opinion, chosen merely because it rhymes with douceur; it is a moment in that sublimation of passion toward which Baudelaire was always striving”, Baudelaire in Our Time (1927) (Jain 1991).
IV 22, 25 sister · · · sprang up: Coleridge: “The lady sprang up suddenly”, Christabel 37 (Richard Eberhart, Harvard Advocate Dec 1938). See note to The wind sprang up at four o’clock 1.
IV 23, 28, V 30, VI 23] For TSE’s remarks to Hayward about the yew, see note to Animula 36.
[Poem I 92–93 · Textual History II 429]
IV 29 And after this our exile: Salve Regina (prayer following the celebration of Mass): “To thee do we send up our sighs mourning and weeping in this valley of tears; turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us; and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus” (Matthiessen).
V
Unadopted title la sua voluntade: Paradiso III 85. See note to VI 30–33.
V 3–9 Word · · · Word: John 1: 1: “In the beginning was the Word”.
V 6–7 for the world · · · light shone in the darkness and: John 1: 5: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” John 8: 12: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
V 8 the Word: to Donald Brace, 22 May 1936: “The line should read: ‘Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled’.” For “Word / World” errors, see Textual History (also After Strange Gods 59: “wordly shrewdness”). the unstilled world still whirled: Sir John Davies: “Behold the World, how it is whirled round, | And for it is so whirl’d, is named so”, Orchestra st. 34. (For Davies’s poem see notes to Gerontion 67–71, Burnt Norton II 6 and East Coker I 25–45.) Despite his judgement in Sir John Davies (1926) that “Davies may be said to have little in common with Donne”, TSE perhaps confused the two when he wrote to G. Wilson Knight, 25 May 1930: “The line you like so much is not absolutely original. Somewhere or another Donne makes a pun on the world being so called because it is ‘whirled’. But I think without modesty that I have improved upon the hint, and any rhythmical value the line has is mine.” (In his poem of the Easter season, Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward, Donne has: “The intelligence that moves, devotion is, | And as the other Spheares · · · our Soules · · · are whirld by it”, but with apparently no pun on “world”.) TSE
again: “The first stanza is a kind of word play used by Donne and Andrewes in sermons, and the pun on ‘world’ and ‘whirled’ is Donne’s”, Excerpts from Lectures (1933). Paradiso XXXIII 143–45 (the closing lines of the Commedia): “ma già volgeva il mio disiro e il velle, | sì come rota ch’ egualmente è mossa, | l’amor che move il sole e l’ altre stelle” [but already my desire and will were rolled—even as a wheel that moveth equally—by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars] (Southam). TSE: “Whirled in a vortex that shall bring | The world to that destructive fire”, East Coker II 15–16.
V 9 silent Word: Lancelot Andrewes: “What, Verbum infans, the Word an infant? The Word, and not able to speak a word?” Christmas Sermon 1611 (on the text of John 1: 14). See notes to Gerontion 17–19 and East Coker I 13.
V 10, 28, 36 O my people, what have I done unto thee: “The refrain does not come directly from the Bible but from the Reproaches of the Pre-sanctified of Good Friday”, Excerpts from Lectures (1933). Micah 6: 3: “O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me”, with the three words “O my people” returning, as in TSE, at 6: 5. TSE on Charles A. Claye’s masque:
The later scenes will have a fuller meaning for those who are familiar with the offices of Holy Week, with Tenebrae—the Mattins of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, with the mournful refrain
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return unto the Lord thy God.
[Poem I 94–95 · Textual History II 429–30]
with The Reproaches
O my people, what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me.
· · · To make these observations is not to imply that the Masque is merely a tissue of allusions intelligible only to liturgical scholars, though certainly it will have a fuller meaning to those who know the impressive Masses of Holy Week. The Masque · · · should appeal to every one according to his knowledge
“The Merry Masque of Our Lady in London Town” (1928)
Grover Smith 153: “Dante is said to have addressed to the citizens of Florence, from his asylum in Verona, a letter beginning with the same phrase, ‘Popule mi, quid feci tibi?’”
V 14–16 On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land · · · day time · · · night time: “In the may time, the play time”, Little Gidding 24 ^ 25 variant.
V 14–21 mainland · · · rain land | For those who walk in darkness · · · night · · · right · · · right · · · Those who walk in darkness: Isaiah 9: 2: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of darkness”.
V 15 those who walk in darkness: Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III 627 (Richard Eberhart, Harvard Advocate Dec 1938).
V 18–19 No place of grace for those who avoid the face · · · the voice: Paradise Lost III 140–42: “in his face | Divine compassion visibly appeared, | Love without end, and without measure Grace, | Which uttering thus he to his Father spake” (Ricks 226).
V 22–24 between | Hour and hour · · · In darkness: Rupert Brooke: “between | Darkness and darkness!” The Fish, a poem TSE praised in Reflections on Contemporary Poetry I (1917).
V 22, VI 4 torn on the horn · · · the profit and the loss: “Caught on those horns that toss and toss · · · Desires completion of his loss”, The Burnt Dancer 35–37 (Jain 1992 187); see note.
V 26 Who will not go away and cannot pray: Herbert: “I could not go away, nor persevere”, Affliction (I) 48 (Schneider 123).
V 34 The desert in the garden the garden in the desert: Milton: “I who e’re while the happy Garden sung · · · Into the Desert”, Paradise Regained I 1, 9.
V 34–35 the desert | Of drouth: Milton: “the Arabian drouth”, Paradise Regained III 274; see note to Little Gidding II 8–9.
V 35 the withered apple-seed: the tree upon which Christ was crucified was said to have grown from the seed of the forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve. “The apple-seed, it should hardly be necessary to mention, refers to an incident in the life of our first parents”, Excerpts from Lectures (1932–33). Joel 1: 12: “the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered” (Hands).
[Poem I 94–95 · Textual History II 430]
VI
VI 3–4 Although I do not hope to turn | | Wavering: Pound: “The trouble in the pace and the uncertain | Wavering!” The Return (1912) 3–4 (Ricks 2010 198). TSE quoted the first four lines of the poem in Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (1917) and included it in Pound’s Selected Poems. See Little Gidding V 16 and note.
VI 4 between the profit and the loss: “Et les profits et les pertes”, Dans le Restaurant 27. “And the profit and loss”, The Waste Land [IV] 314. “I have seen much of life, in its various shades, | And the fat and the lean, and the profit and loss”, Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats 8–9.
VI 4–6, 21 the loss … dreams cross · · · dreamcrossed · · · where three dreams cross: OED has this as sole citation for “dreamcrossed”. Romeo and Juliet Prologue 6: “star-crossed lovers”. TSE: “Those who have crossed · · · not as lost · · · dreams · · · dream kingdom · · · star · · · dream kingdom · · · crossed · · · dreams”, The Hollow Men I 13, 15; II 1–2, 10, 12, 15, 21.
VI 7 Bless me father: “Bless me, father, for I have sinned”, the penitent’s first words to the priest during Confession.
VI 8 From the wide window towards the granite shore: “what shores what granite islands towards my timbers”, Marina 33 (Leavis 130). “The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite | Into which it reaches”, The Dry Salvages I 16–17. (The Eliots’ house at Cape Ann has a picture window looking out to sea, across granite rocks.)
VI 8–10 shore | The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying | Unbroken wings: Tennyson: “And white sails flying on the yellow sea”, The Marriage of Geraint 829 in Idylls of the King. Coleridge: “the Islands and white sails, | Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean”, Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement 36–37; TSE scored these lines in Coleridge’s Poetical Works (1907). Harold Monro: “to sail | Seaward on white enormous wings”, Trees IV (1916).
VI 14 golden-rod and the lost sea smell: “in Missouri I missed the fir trees, the bay and goldenrod, the song-sparrows, the red granite and the blue sea of Massachusetts”, This American World (1928); see headnote to The Dry Salvages, 2. “THE RIVER IS WITHIN US, THE SEA IS ALL ABOUT US” (Williamson 207–208).
VI 16 whirling plover: James Grahame: “the wheeling plover ceas’d | Her plaint”, The Sabbath 165–66; misquoted by Walter Scott in Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk letter XV as “whirling plover”. plover: pronounced (correctly) pluvver in TSE’s recordings.
VI 17 And the blind eye creates: “I do not know whether the thought of possible blindness haunts other writers, but I know that it has always haunted me. And this, without any physical premonition: my sight, I am thankful to say, is as reliable as most people’s. For a writer, blindness need not be, of course, the end of his activity, as it must be for a painter: but it involves re-adjustments so great as to frighten me · · · That is why, if I were suddenly blinded, or if I found the world slowly dimming before my eyes, I should be thankful for the invention of braille”, Some Thoughts on Braille (1952). (In 1949 TSE had sat for what was probably the final oil painting by Wyndham Lewis before he lost his sight; Magdalene.)
[Poem I 96–97 · Textual History II 431]
VI 18 The empty forms between the ivory gates: William Morris: “Beats with light wing against the ivory gate · · · empty”, The Earthly Paradise, An Apology st. 4 (for which see note to I 5–6). ivory gates: see note to WLComposite 352.
VI 19–35 ts2] See note to Marina 21.
VI 30–33 Our peace in His will · · · spirit of the sea: in Paradiso III, Dante encounters Piccarda de Donati in the lowest sphere of heaven and asks whether she desires a more lofty place. She replies:
[70]
“Frate, la nostra volontà quieta
sol quel ch’avemo, e d’altro non ci asseta.
Se disiassimo esser più superne,
foran discordi gli nostri disiri
[75]
dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne,
che vedrai noi capere in questi giri,
s’essere in caritate è qui necesse,
e se la sua natura ben rimiri.
Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse
[80]
tenersi dentro alla divina voglia,
per ch’una fansi nostre volgie stesse.
Sì che, come noi sem di soglia in soglia
per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace,
come allo re ch’a suo voler ne invoglia;
[85]
e la sua volontate è nostra pace:
ella è quel mare, al qual tutto si move
ciò ch’ella crea e che natura face.”
[“Brother, the quality of love stilleth our will, and maketh us long only for what we have, and giveth us no other thirst. Did we desire to be more aloft, our longings were discordant from his will who here assorteth us, and for that, thou wilt see, there is no room within these circles, if of necessity we have our being here in love, and if thou think again what is love’s nature. Nay, ’tis the essence of this blessed being to hold ourselves within the divine will, whereby our own wills are themselves made one. So that our being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is a joy to all the realm as to the king, who draweth our wills to what he willeth; and his will is our peace; it is that sea to which all moves that it createth and that nature maketh.”]
[Poem I 96–97 · Textual History II 431]
In the copy his mother gave him, TSE scored these lines, with the final tercet scored in both margins.
Arnold twice cited “In la sua volontade è nostra pace” in The Study of Poetry (1880). In Byron (1881), he wrote of “the great poets who made such verse” as this line, alongside touchstones from the Iliad and King Lear. In 1913, in the Harvard Festschrift for George Kittredge (see note to The Waste Land [V] 399–422), William T. Brewster quoted Arnold’s judgement from 1880 that the line was “altogether beyond Chaucer’s reach”, while Jefferson B. Fletcher took issue with Santayana: “According to him, ‘For Piccarda to say that she accepts the will of God means not that she shares it, but that she submits to it’ · · · Piccarda fairly sings her joy; Dr. Santayana would have her but sighing her resignation.” (For Piccarda de Donati, see note to A Cooking Egg 24.) TSE: “Let us therefore make perfect our will”, Choruses to “The Rock” VIII 48 (see note).