The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 181
[Poem I 284 · Textual History II 596]
9–10, 21–22 The sweat transpirèd from my pores! | I saw sepulchral gates, flung wide · · · God in a rolling ball of fire | Pursues my errant feet: Marvell: “But at my back I always hear | Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near · · · And while thy willing Soul transpires | At every pore with instant fires · · · Let us roll all our strength, and all | Our sweetness, up into one ball: | And tear our pleasures with rough strife, | Thorough the iron gates of life”, To His Coy Mistress 21–44 (Shawn Worthington, personal communication).
13 That hand, prophetical and slow: Paradise Lost, penultimate line: “They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow”.
15 cerements: correctly pronounced serments, but OED notes sometimes erroneously three syllables, because of ceremony (as TSE’s metre asks). Fowler: “disyllabic”.
15–16 Tore the disordered cerements, | Around that head: Poe: “she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair”, Ligeia.
20 charnel vault: Poe: “the bandages and draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure”, Ligeia.
21 God, in a rolling ball of fire: Marlowe: “The golden ball of Heaven’s eternal fire”, Tamburlaine Part II II iv (Shawn Worthington, personal communication).
22 errant feet: poetic diction. William Watson: “secret influence to himself unknown | Guided the wandering of his errant feet”, The Prince’s Quest (1880) IX. Owen Innsly: “hold the errant feet that stray”, Service in Love Poems and Sonnets (1881).
24 consuming heat: Francis Thompson: “commingling heat”, The Hound of Heaven 89–93 (Shawn Worthington, personal communication); see headnote, “an echo”. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “The Hound of Heaven (paper)”, but he wrote to Geoffrey Curtis, 23 Mar 1932, of Thompson: “I do not know his poetry very well, and if I do not know it very well it is probably because I do not like it very much · · · I am not sure that in his religious poetry he ever reaches a spirit of pure devotion. The only poem I remember at the moment is certainly a very good one, the lines To the Dead Cardinal, but as I remember that, it is rather fine rhetoric than piety.”
Dirge
Published in WLFacs. See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION.
Assigned to 1919 in March Hare xlii, but to Oct–Nov 1921 by Rainey 35, and to Nov 1921 by Rainey 200–201. See headnote to The Death of the Duchess.
The earlier of the two mss of Dirge, almost certainly drafted in Margate in Oct–Nov 1921, is on the verso of the quatrains to which TSE added the title Elegy. See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION, for its relations to these two short poems.
[Poems I 285 · Textual History II 596]
A reworking of Ariel’s song in The Tempest I ii:
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them,—
Ding, dong, bell.
printed thus as A Sea Dirge in The Golden Treasury, where it is paired with A Land Dirge from Webster’s The White Devil (see note to The Waste Land [I] 71–75). TSE: “Shakespeare too, was occupied with the struggle—which alone constitutes life for a poet—to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal”, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). Pound: “Full many a fathomed sea-change in the eyes | That sought with him the salt-sea victories”, Three Cantos (II) in Poetry July 1917, collected in Lustra (1919). Bleistein and Ariel’s song are first associated in Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 5–6. Valerie Eliot: “The parodying of Ariel’s song may owe something to the Proteus episode of Ulysses”, BBC broadcast 2 Nov 1971. Joyce, Ulysses episode III, in Little Review May 1918, repr. Egoist Mar–Apr 1919, during TSE’s tenure as deputy editor:
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one he said. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. We have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit · · · God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man
Decomposition of bodies in water is discussed over several pages of Poe’s detective story The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, which TSE he admired as “the most austere example of the type” (to Gilbert Seldes, 12 Apr 1927). For Poe, see headnote to Elegy.
3 Graves’ Disease in a dead jew’s eyes!: Coleridge: “the curse in a dead man’s eye!” The Rime of the Ancient Mariner IV. TSE’s ms1 had “Jew’s” and “man’s” as alternate readings. The Merchant of Venice III i: “Hath not a Jew eyes? · · · subject to the same diseases” (Julius 125). Graves’ Disease: exophthalmic goitre (WLFacs notes). jew’s eyes!: Oxf Dictionary of English Proverbs: “To be worth a Jew’s eye = to be of much value; orig. worth while for a Jewess’s eye to look at”, citing G. Harvey (1593): “As dear as a Jew’s eye.” The Merchant of Venice II v: ‘There will come a Christian by, | Will be worth a Jewess’s eye’.” See note to Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 23.
4 When the crabs have eat the lids: Corbière: “Un cadavre bossu, ballonné, démasqué | Par les crabes” [A hunchbacked corpse, swollen, laid open by the crabs], Le Bossu Bitor [Bitor The Hunchback], penultimate stanza. eat: Fowler: “The past is spelt ate (rarely eat) & pronounced ĕt (wrongly āt).”
[Poem I 285 · Textual History II 596–97]
6 suffer a sea-change: Fowler: “one of the most importunate & intrusive of IRRELEVANT ALLUSIONS, & HACKNEYED PHRASES.” sea-change: OED “sea” 23a: “a change wrought by the sea; now freq. transf. with or without allusion to Shakespeare’s use · · · an alteration or metamorphosis, a radical change”, with no citations between Shakespeare and Pound.
7 rich and strange: for Ariel’s song, see headnote.
8, 10 nose · · · toes: see note to Suite Clownesque I 23–24.
16 variant, 17 Sea nymphs nightly · · · Hark now I hear them scratch scratch scratch: two songs in The Tempest. I ii, ARIEL: “Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell | Hark! now I hear them,— | Ding, dong, bell” (see headnote). And II ii, STEPHANO:
“The master, the swabber, the boat-swain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg and Marian, and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate.
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a sailor go hang;
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er he did itch.
Then to sea boys and let her go hang.
17 Hark! now I hear them scratch scratch scratch: “Bark bark BARK BARK | Until you can hear them”, Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles 9–10. scratch scratch scratch: “Shantih shantih shantih”, The Waste Land last line. (The similarity is clearest in Dirge ms1, where the three words are lowered as though a separate line.)
Those are pearls that were his eyes. See!
Published in WLFacs.
Assigned to May 1921 by Rainey 35. WLFacs notes: “This poem may have been written in 1921.” A footnote on the transcription page (WLFacs 123) adds: “The first line became The Waste Land [I] 48, with ‘Look!’ substituted for ‘See!’” (see also [
II] 125). Valerie Eliot on these five lines: “The final poem is really a continuation of Dirge”, BBC broadcast 2 Nov 1971. See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION.
1 Those are pearls that were his eyes. See!: The Tempest I ii: “Those are pearls that were his eyes · · · Sea-nymphs” (see headnote to Dirge and note to The Waste Land [I] 48).
3 variant And the torn algae drift above him, purple, red: Valerie Eliot: “I wonder if he heard the echo of ‘And blossom in purple and red’ from Tennyson’s Maud”, BBC broadcast 2 Nov 1971 (Maud I [xxii] 920–23: “My dust would hear her and beat | Had I lain for a century dead; | Would start and tremble under her feet, | And blossom in purple and red”).
5 Still quiet brother are you still and quiet: WLFacs notes: “Probably unconscious echo of Othello III i: ‘of spirit | So still and quiet’.”
[Poems I 285–86 · Textual History II 597]
Exequy
Published in WLFacs.
Assigned to Nov 1921 by Rainey 35.
WLFacs notes: “Discouraging Eliot from including this poem in The Waste Land, Pound wrote: ‘even the sovegna doesnt hold with the rest’” [24 Jan 1922]. The reference is to the final line. See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION.
1–2 Persistent lovers will repair · · · to my suburban tomb: Donne: “When my grave is broke up again · · · All women shall adore us, and some men”, The Relique 1, 19. suburban tomb: OED “suburban” quotes “The Rich had stately Monuments on the sides of the publick ways in their own suburbane fields” (1673).
6 sacred grove: Frazer: “Beside the temple at Upsala there was a sacred grove”, The Golden Bough II 364 (in a section discussing thunder gods). For The Sacred Wood, see note to Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) 3.
8–12 my athletic marble form | Forever lithe, forever young, | With grateful garlands shall be hung | And flowers of deflowered maids; | The cordial flame shall keep me warm: Keats: “unravished bride · · · leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape · · · For ever warm and still to be enjoyed | For ever panting, and for ever young · · · with garlands dressed”, Ode on a Grecian Urn (Crawford 129). For Keats’s Ode, see note to The Waste Land [II] 102.
15–21 pencil draft [1] Pudibund: OED rare a: “That is a subject of shame; shameful. Obs.” b: “Modest, bashful, prudish.” TSE to Conrad Aiken, from Marburg, 19 July 1914: “I find that I have only one (torn) pair of pajamas, and my dictionary does not give the word for them. Que faire? The dictionary, however, gives the German equivalents for gracilent and pudibund. You might do something with that, but I lack inspiration” (WLFacs notes).
15–21 pencil draft [5] mel.: for “melodious” (WLFacs notes).
15–21 pencil draft [6] am.: “for amorous” (WLFacs notes).
15 melodious fountain falls: Marlowe: “By shallow rivers, to whose falls | Melodious birds sing madrigals”, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 7–8; in The Golden Treasury (Crawford 129).
16 Carved by the cunning Bolognese: Giambologna, Renaissance sculptor of fountains in Bologna, the Boboli Gardens in Florence and elsewhere.
19–21 Pound’s annotation: “This is Laforgue not XVIII”] For a return to the 18th century, see next note.
23 disdainful or disdained: Pope: “Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains”, To Mr. Murray 61.
27 Just at: ringed by TSE but deleted by Pound, this original reading is better than the alternative TSE offered (“Upon”) because the awkwardness of “on the Mound | Upon the crisis”, would have asked further revision.
[Poem I 286–87 · Textual History II 597–98]
27–28 he shall hear | A breathless chuckle underground: for Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, see note to The Waste Land [III] 185, 196–97.
29 SOVEGNA · · · DOLOR: [be mindful in due time of my pain], Purg. XXVI 147 (WLFacs notes). For TSE’s returns to this Arnaut Daniel passage, see note to the title Ara Vos Prec in headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC.
29 variant Consiros vei la pasada folor: [in thought I see my past madness] Purg. XXVI 143 (WLFacs notes). The Italian spelling is “passada”.
The Builders
Composed as part of The Rock, this song (with words by T. S. Eliot, music by Martin Shaw) was published separately in 1934 as no. 107 in Cramer’s Library of Unison and Part-Songs by Modern Composers, ed. Martin Shaw.
Printed in The Rock 19 (first stanza) and 28–29 (third stanza). The second stanza of the musical setting did not appear in The Rock, and the refrain (“A Church · · · unto this last”) is there set in prose. The first stanza is repeated at the end of The Rock and was printed at the end of the theatre programme, to be sung by the audience after the Bishop’s Benediction. Browne (30): “It had been planned from the first that the revue should have a theme-song, to be introduced at various points during the show and, it was hoped, to be widely sung afterwards in London.”
Two other stanzas appear elsewhere (The Rock 64):
We have worked and have fought
For this London of ours;
Our lives have been bought
By Our Lord on the Cross;
We are those who pay rent [5]
To the temporal powers;
Of our lives misspent
Our Lord bears the loss.
(refrain)
With the strength that was warmed
In verminous rooms, [10]
With hands that were formed
In resentful wombs,
We will build the new towers
And fashion the shrine
In this London of ours [15]
For the Bread and the Wine.
(refrain)
Martin Shaw to TSE, undated (Bodleian):
V[erse] 3 One awkward musical place—last line really wants another syllable at beginning. This is pattern:—
[Poems I 287–88 · Textual History II 598–99]
In this London of ours
Oh of yours and of mine
Without that syllable there is a musical hiatus. 3 has the only penultimate line with a masculine ending. Could this be done? Otherwise it won’t sing well. “Ours” can’t be sung like “towers” unfortunately. Shall we print 3 verses & say “go back to 1st verse to end with if you want to”? I think 3 enough for singing.
TSE sent two revised versions on 25 Jan 1934. To R. Webb-Odell, 11 May: “Here is a draft of a note for the programme · · · It does not seem to me worth while, in the space, to give an exact and complete synopsis of the play, but merely the hang of it. Perhaps you may think it desirable to add a note about the Builders’ Song.”
TSE to Theodore Spencer, 20 June 1934: “The performances went off well—houses quite well filled—bishops pleased as some money was made · · · we had a fellow come down from Stepney with a piano-accordeon to provide the accompaniment for the bricklayer’s song.” To C. H. Gibbs-Smith, 11 June 1935, probably of this song: “I have no objection to your using the lines · · · but as the song from which the words come is rather a poor piece of doggerel I should prefer that my name should not be attached unless you particularly insist upon it.”
1–2, 6–7 Ill done and undone | London · · · the Thames · · · Queen of · · · Water: see note to The Waste Land [II] 77–110 for Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra’s barge (“and what they undid did”) and The Waste Land [III] 279–91 for Queen Elizabeth I on the Thames.
6, 7 Thames bord · · · Water: London’s water authority, 1903–74, was the Metropolitan Water Board.
10, 20, 30 unto this last: in the parable of the labourers, the householder hires labourers at different hours. At the end of the day he pays all equally, saying to those who have worked the longest, “Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee” (Matthew 20: 14). Ruskin, Unto This Last (1862).
15–16 Shall the fruit fall then | The harvest be waste: Herbert: “all blasted? | All wasted? | Not so, my heart: but there is fruit”, The Collar 15–17.
Mr. Pugstyles: The Elegant
Pig
TSE to Frank Morley, 3 May 1933: “Dear Franck · · · What you need now is a Pig, A pig, tell Sussanna that his name is Mr. Pugstyles: the way to pick a good pig; the ones that look like Stanley [Baldwin] are better pigs than the ones that look like Winston [Churchill]; get one of Stanley’s pigs.” To Hayward, 26 July 1934: “I have finished my Poem about the Pig, and should like to recite it.”
[Poems I 287–90 · Textual History II 599–600]
Broadside verses to stir up support were popular at elections in the 18th and 19th centuries. Alexander Baring, the Taunton MP 1806–26, was the subject, for instance, of Baring’s the Man: “Baring deserves our highest praise, | Let ev’ry Briton him revere; | Extol his acts in raptrous lays, | And stedfastly to him adhere!” For TSE pairing Mr. Pugstyles and Difficulties of a Statesman, see headnote to Coriolan, 1. COMPOSITION.
Title] In Nicholas Nickleby ch. XVI, Mr. Pugstyles is a “plump old gentleman” who leads a delegation of constituents. He accuses their MP, Mr. Gregsbury, of “rather too much of a ‘gammon’ tendency”, but Gregsbury—“tough, burly, thickheaded”—refuses to resign (Grover Smith 33). Dickens also satirises elections in Pickwick Papers ch. XIII: “Some Account of Eatanswill · · · and of the Election of a Member to serve in Parliament for that ancient, loyal, and patriotic Borough”. For Shelley, “The Public Sty. The Boars in full Assembly”, see note to Coriolan I. Triumphal March 4–46.