The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 117
15 And one’s week’s leave a year: OED “leave” 1e: “In military, naval, and official use (also sometimes in schools and gen. in offices, etc.)”
16–21 commission · · · commission · · · commission · · · Volscian commission: “commission”, in the other sense of authority conferred, occurs three times in Coriolanus.
21–23 confer with a Volscian commission | About perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and smiths · · · protest against the reduction of orders: international disarmament talks had popular support at the time of the poem, but The Times 26 Mar 1929 reported the chairman of Vickers-Armstrong saying that the company was “dependent on the amount of armament orders available, without which we cannot hope to make profits.” For Ludendorff’s protest at the loss of Germany’s armaments, see note to Coriolan I. Triumphal March 13–23. TSE: “the politicians, the bankers, the armament makers · · · I believe that modern war is chiefly caused by some immorality of competition which is always with us in times of ‘peace’; and that until this evil is cured, no leagues or disarmaments or collective security or conferences or conventions or treaties will suffice to prevent it · · · And here is the perpetual message of the Church · · · The Church has perpetually to answer this question: to what purpose were we born?” The Church’s Message (1937). perpetual peace: Richard III V ii: “To reap the harvest of perpetual peace, | By this one bloody trial of sharp war”. Coriolanus II ii: “Run reeking o’er the lives of men as if ’twere | A perpetual spoil”. Immanuel Kant Project for a Perpetual Peace (1795) (Mark Thompson, personal communication). fletchers: OED: “One who makes or deals in arrows; occasionally, one who makes bows and arrows. Obs. exc. Hist. or arch.”
24 marches: OED “march” n. 3, 1a: “a tract of land on the border of a country, or a tract of debatable land separating one country from another. Often collect. pl., esp. with reference to the portions of England bordering respectively on Scotland and on Wales. Now Hist. and arch.” TSE: “men from the marches”, Anabasis I xv. Housman: “They cease not fighting, east and west, | On the marches of my breast”, A Shropshire Lad XXVIII, The Welsh Marches 23–24. (TSE: “the hills | That lie on the border of Shropshire and Wales”, Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats 22–23.) M. Bland of Faber, memo to printer, 18 Aug 1947: “In The Difficulties of a Statesman the line ‘The guards shake dice on the marshes’ should read ‘The guards shake dice on the marches’. ‘Marshes’ at the end of the following line is correct” (Faber archive).
25 And the frogs · · · croak in the marshes: Virgil: “Et veterem in limo ranae cecinere querelam” [And the frogs in the mud croak their ancient lament], Georgics I 378 (Grover Smith 166). O Mantuan: Purg. VI 74–78: “‘O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city’ · · · Ah Italy, thou slave, hostel of woe, vessel without pilot in a mighty storm, no mistress of provinces, but a brothel!” (Stormon). Moody 167: “Sordello’s greeting to Virgil · · · moved Dante to cry out against the falling away of the Italian city-states from the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire.”
[Poem I 133–34 · Textual History II 455]
26 variant lightning in nights of July: the month was so named in honour of the month of Julius Caesar’s birth. Julius Caesar I iii begins with thunder and lightning: “the cross blue lightning · · · this dreadful night | That thunders, lightens, opens graves”. July is the “Thunder Month” (The Oxford Companion to the Year, quoting 1696: “With the great bell to drive away thunder and lightning”). It is also the month of Bastille Day, for which see headnote to Triumphal March. In the United States it is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; see Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”), which in ts1 was titled Ode on Independence Day, July 4th 1918 and which has an epigraph from Coriolanus.
28, 36, 40, 50 Mother mother · · · O mother · · · Mother · · · O mother: the crisis in Coriolanus V iii: “O Mother, Mother! | What have you done? · · · Oh my Mother, Mother: Oh! · · · Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d.” D. H. Lawrence “gave his best to his mother”, TSE’s Lecture Notes as Norton Professor (1933).
31 sweaty torchbearer: OED’s first citation for “torch-bearer” is from Sir Thomas Elyot, 1538. “After the torchlight red on sweaty faces”, The Waste Land [V] 322.
32 the dove’s foot rested: Genesis 8: 8–9: “He sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark.”
32–33 O hidden under the … Hidden under the … Where the dove’s foot rested · · · repose of noon, set under the upper branches of noon’s widest tree: “O hidden under the dove’s wing · · · breast, | Under the palmtree at noon”, Coriolan I. Triumphal March 32–33 (same line-numbers as in this part). “Hidden under coral islands”, Mr. Apollinax 10. “Hidden under the heron’s wing · · · the lotos-birds”, Hidden under the heron’s wing 1–2. (For TSE and exotic islands, see note to Sweeney Agonistes II. Fragment of an Agon 1–39.)
35 the cyclamen spreads its wings: “Wreathed in the wingèd cyclamen”, Elegy 4.
39 Noses strong to break the wind: Massinger: “Here he comes, | His nose held up; he hath something in the wind”, The Roman Actor IV i (Hands). Quoting the lines in Philip Massinger (1920), TSE called them “hardly comparable to ‘the Cardinal lifts up his nose like a foul porpoise before a storm’” (Webster, The Duchess of Malfi III iii). Holland’s Suetonius: “he would give folke leave to breake winde downward · · · having certaine intelligence, that there was one who for manners and modestie sake, by holding it in, endaungered his owne life”, Life of Tiberius §32 (Tudor Translations, introduction by Charles Whibley, 1899).
[Poem I 134 · Textual History II 455]
42 mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations: Maurice de la Taille’s The Mystery of Faith and Human Opinion Contrasted and Defined (1930) discusses Christ as the property of God: “And all this in current language will be expressed in terms of prayer, of supplication, of impetration” (54). It also contains an essay, Distinction between Oblation and Immolation in Traditional Theology, which asks “whether we ought to use the word immolation to signify explicitly (in recto) the killing or mactation of the animal, inasmuch as that killing has in view the sacerdotal oblation of the sacrifice, or whether we should not rather keep the word immolation for the sacerdotal oblation itelf, as connoting (in obliquo) the aforesaid killing or mactation” (349). TSE to Lord Halifax (born 1839, President of the English Church Union), 27 Mar 1931, acknowledging loan of the volume: “Thank you very much for lending me De la Taille”. At Easter [5 Apr] 1931: “On some points he confirmed what I already believed—as the unity of the Passion and sacrifice—and he provides valuable suggestion on one point that had puzzled me, the Agony of Gethsemane after the Last Supper · · · the ‘symbolism’ in the Eucharist seems to me sui generis, and in danger of confusion with ordinary types of symbolism.” In his copy of G. Jones, against quotations of this line and 33, TSE wrote “from some book on the Eucharist recommended to me by Will Spens [Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge]” and “See Halifax and La Taille” (Valerie Eliot collection). In a copy of 1963 2nd imp. (1965), Valerie Eliot wrote: “P. de la Taille on the Eucharist”. mactations: OED: “The action of killing, esp. the slaughtering of a sacrificial victim”. oblations: OED: “The action of solemnly offering or presenting something to God or to a deity; the offering of a sacrifice”. In the drafts of The Rock, a priest speaks words attributed in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to Hugh Latimer: “The very marrow bones of the mass are altogether detestable, and therefore by no means to be borne withal, so that of necessity the mending of it is to abolish it for ever. For if you take away oblation and adoration, which do hang upon consecration and transubstantiation, the most papists of them all will not set a button by the mass, as a thing which they esteem not, but for the gain that followeth thereon” (ts, Lord Chamberlain’s Papers, BL). impetrations: OED: “The action of obtaining or procuring by
request or entreaty. (Chiefly Theol.)”
48 “Rising and falling, crowned with dust”: Kipling: “Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying”, epigraph to The Story of Muhammad Din (Grover Smith 316, informed by TSE). See To the Indians who Died in Africa 1–5.
[Poem I 134 · Textual History II 455]
Minor Poems
Section introduced, with half-title, 1936+. (None of the poems was ever added to Sel Poems.)
CONTENTS IN ORDER OF FIRST PUBLICATION:
Eyes that last I saw in tears Chapbook [Nov] 1924
The wind sprang up at four o’clock Chapbook [Nov] 1924
Five-Finger Exercises I–V Criterion Jan 1933
Landscapes I. New Hampshire Virginia Quarterly Review Apr 1934
Landscapes II. Virginia Virginia Quarterly Review Apr 1934
Landscapes IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe NEW 17 Oct 1935
Lines for an Old Man NEW 28 Nov 1935
Landscapes V. Cape Ann New Democracy 15 Dec 1935
Landscapes III. Usk 1936
Section title Minor Poems: “I admit that my own experience, as a minor poet, may have jaundiced my outlook”, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). “I do not pretend to offer Vaughan, or Southwell, or George Herbert, or Hopkins as major poets: I feel sure that the first three, at least, are poets of this limited awareness”, Religion and Literature (1935). Adding this essay to Selected Essays in 1950 (in the US) and 1951 (in Britain), TSE added a footnote after “major poets”: “I note that in an address delivered in Swansea some years later (subsequently published in The Welsh Review under the title of What Is Minor Poetry?) I stated with some emphasis my opinion that Herbert is a major, not a minor poet. I agree with my later opinion. [1949]”.
Eyes that last I saw in tears
Eyes that last I saw in tears and The wind sprang up at four o’clock were “I” and “II” of Doris’s Dream Songs, published in Chapbook [Nov] 1924, then in America as Three Dream Songs in American Poetry 1925 ed. Louis Untermeyer (1925). (The third “Dream Song” became The Hollow Men III.) Eyes that last I saw in tears was also printed as “II” of Three Poems in Criterion Jan 1925, with a footnote: “The second of these poems appeared in the Chapbook 1924, but is here reproduced because of the different context.” Omitted from 1925, Eyes that last I saw in tears reappeared, among the “Minor Poems”, 1936+. When Conrad Aiken asked why it was not in 1925, TSE replied, 22 Jan 1926: “The answer to paragraph 3 of your letter is that I did not think it was good enough and that it did not seem to fit in very well with the rest.”
The private printing for Frederick Prokosch (“Venice”, “1939”) is a later forgery (see Nicolas Barker, The Butterfly Books, 1987).
No recording known.
[Poems I 137–49 · Textual History II 457–68]
In his interview with TSE, Donald Hall asked: “Are any of your minor poems actually sections cut out of longer works? There are two that sound like The Hollow Men.” TSE: “Oh, those were the preliminary sketches. Those things were earlier. Others I published in periodicals but not in my collected poems. You don’t want to say the same thing twice in one book”, Paris Review (1959).
To Roberto Sanesi, in response to a list of 29 poems Sanesi wished to translate into Italian, 10 Dec 1959: “I should suggest omitting also Eyes that last I saw in tears and The Wind sprang up at Four o’clock in as much as these were merely preliminary sketches before The Hollow Men.”
1, 3, 5 Eyes that last I saw in tears · · · death’s dream kingdom · · · the eyes: Dante, Vita Nuova [XXXI], tr. Rossetti: “The eyes that weep for pity of the heart · · · Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven, | The kingdom where the angels are at peace · · · and to her friends is dead”, The Early Italian Poets 288 (Bush 88). TSE: “And I have known the eyes already”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 55, with “decisions and revisions”, 48 (here: “decision | Eyes I shall not see · · · hold us in derision”, 9–10, 15) (Bush 89).
1–4, 15 Eyes · · · death’s dream · · · vision · · · in derision: Swinburne, three times: “to derision · · · death and division”, Dolores 157–59. “In his eyes foreknowledge of death · · · with derision · · · vision | Between a sleep and a sleep”, Atalanta in Calydon 357–61. “The grave’s mouth laughs unto derision | Desire and dread and dream and vision”, Ilicet 34–35.
2–3 division · · · kingdom: King Lear I i: “in the division of the kingdom.”
7, 15 my affliction · · · in derision: Psalm 119: 50: “This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me. The proud have had me greatly in derision.”
13–14 eyes · · · a little while | A little while · · · tears: Job 24: 23: “his eyes are upon their ways. They are exalted for a little while.” Psalm 37: 10: “For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be.” John 7: 33: “yet a little while am I with you” (similarly 12: 35, 13: 33). John 14: 19: “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more”. John 16: 16–20: “A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me · · · ye shall weep and lament.”
13, 15 eyes · · · hold us in derision: Cavalcanti, tr. Pound: “hold me not in derision · · · And then toward me they so turned their eyes”, Ballata VII 9, 13. For Cavalcanti, Dante’s close friend, see note to Ash-Wednesday I 1. hold us in derision: Job 30: 1: “have me in derision.” Psalm 2: 4: “The Lord shall have them in derision.” Psalm 59: 8: “thou shalt have all the heathen in derision.”
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
Publication: see headnote to Eyes that last I saw in tears. Seven lines are taken, slightly revised, from Song (“The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch”); see headnote to that poem. Omitted from 1925, The wind sprang up at four o’clock reappeared, among the “Minor Poems”, 1936+.
No recording known.
[Poems I 139–40 · Textual History II 457–58]
G. Jones 19: “A large structure of allusion moves behind these lines condensing Cantos VII–XII of the Inferno · · · The Tartar horsemen · · · are the Centaurs (horsemen) of Inferno XII · · · this canto occurs at 4 a.m. on Holy Saturday morning; and Dante signifies the time by saying that the Great Bear is lying over the abode of Caurus, the north-west wind. It is across the river Phlegethon that these creatures shake their spears at Virgil and Dante.” See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION, for its relations to this poem.
1 The wind sprang up: “The world of contact sprang up like a blow | The winds”, Bacchus and Ariadne: 2nd Debate between the Body and Soul 11 (see note). “then sprang up a little damp dead breeze”, Oh little voices of the throats of men 45. “The wind sprang up and broke the bells”, Song (“The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch”) 7.
1, 5 four o’clock · · · waking: “—And we are moved into these strange opinions | By four-o’clock-in-the-morning thoughts”, Preludes IV additional lines after 16 in ms1. “The lamp said, ‘Four o’clock · · · prepare for life’”, Rhapsody on a Windy Night 69–77.
2 broke the bells: OED “break” 6. intr.: “To crack without complete separation. Formerly said of a bell”.
3 Swinging between life and death: “Swinging from life to death”, Song (“The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch”) 4.
5 confusing strife: James 3: 16: “For where envying and strife is, there is confusion.”
5, 7 strife · · · river: Ezekiel 47: 19: “from Tamar even to the waters of strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea” (again at 28: 48). Psalm 106: 32: “They angered him also at the waters of strife.”
7 the blackened river: the Styx. Dryden’s Virgil: “by Styx he swore, | The Lake of liquid Pitch” and “Styx, th’Inviolable Flood, | And the black Regions”, Aeneid IX 120–21, X 173–74.
10, 12 shake · · · spears: Job 41: 29: “He laugheth at the shaking of a spear.” TSE: “the mind shakes its tumult of spears”, Anabasis I xii.
1
2 Tartar: OED n.2 1: “A native inhabitant of the region of Central Asia extending eastward from the Caspian Sea, and formerly known as Independent and Chinese Tartary. First known in the West as applied to the mingled host of Mongols, Tartars, Turks, etc., which under the leadership of Jenghiz Khan (1202–1227) overran and devastated much of Asia and Eastern Europe; hence vaguely applied to the descendants of these now dwelling in Asia or Europe”; n.4 Obs.: “= Tartarus; the infernal regions; hell.” Perhaps prompted here by “Tamar”; see note to 5, 7.
Five-Finger Exercises
Published in Criterion Jan 1933. TSE returned the proofs to his secretary Miss B. Wilberforce, 18 Oct 1932, in a letter from America with a PS: “There seem to be very few dogs in this country.”
[Poems I 140–43 · Textual History II 458]
No recording known.
Title Five-Finger Exercises: OED: “a piece of music written for the purpose of affording practice in the movement of the fingers in pianoforte playing; also transf. and fig., something very easy”, from 1903.
I and II: Aurelia Hodgson, wife of Ralph Hodgson, made notes on TSE: “During the spring he wrote two short poems, one Lines to a Cat, the other To a Dog. Vivienne told me he had written the former the day before, and after dinner she asked him to read it to me. He found it and said, ‘I will if you’ll stay in the room. The more people there are, the easier it is to read.’ I felt very honoured. When R. was present a few days later we asked him to read it again. By then he had the two, and he felt the latter [with former written above] was the better. R. said, ‘Read both, and we can see.’ He did, tho after the first he opened Blake and read a poem about the three nuns, which was remotely suggestive. T.S.E. said, ‘A poem is nothing, if it isn’t unique, and this one isn’t!’ The second one came to him while he was in a tube train, and he passed up his station in his haste to put it on paper” (Bryn Mawr, box 25, nbk 7). For Blake, see note to I 1.