The Waste Land
By T.S Eliot
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding | |
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing | |
Memory and desire, stirring | |
Dull roots with spring rain. | |
Winter kept us warm, covering | 5 |
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding | |
A little life with dried tubers. | |
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee | |
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, | |
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, | 10 |
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. | |
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. | |
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, | |
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, | |
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, | 15 |
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. | |
In the mountains, there you feel free. | |
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. | |
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow | |
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, | 20 |
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only | |
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, | |
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, | |
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only | |
There is shadow under this red rock, | 25 |
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock), | |
And I will show you something different from either | |
Your shadow at morning striding behind you | |
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; | |
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. | 30 |
Frisch weht der Wind | |
Der Heimat zu, | |
Mein Irisch Kind, | |
Wo weilest du? | |
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; | 35 |
They called me the hyacinth girl.” | |
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, | |
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not | |
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither | |
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, | 40 |
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. | |
Öd’ und leer das Meer. | |
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, | |
Had a bad cold, nevertheless | |
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, | 45 |
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, | |
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, | |
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) | |
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, | |
The lady of situations. | 50 |
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, | |
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, | |
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, | |
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find | |
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. | 55 |
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. | |
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, | |
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: | |
One must be so careful these days. | |
Unreal City, | 60 |
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, | |
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, | |
I had not thought death had undone so many. | |
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, | |
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. | 65 |
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, | |
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours | |
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. | |
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson! | |
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! | 70 |
That corpse you planted last year in your garden, | |
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? | |
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? | |
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, | |
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! | 75 |
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” | |
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The Waste Land By T.S Eliot
Posted by
Shohel Rana
at
11:56 PM
Friday, March 8, 2013
Labels: poem by T.S Eliot, THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD, Waste Land
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