Sunday, April 6, 2025

The Waste Land (III) / T.S. Eliot


            III.  The Fire Sermon

    The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest —
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the 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 and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
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 hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

                        The river sweats
                        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
                        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
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’

‘My feet are at Moorgate, 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.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
                            la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning



"The Waste Land Part III The Fire Sermon" by T.S. Eliot
(read by Tom O'Bedlam). Courtesy SpokenVerse.

Saturday, April 5, 2025

The Waste Land (IV-V) / T.S. Eliot


            IV.  Death by Water

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

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
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
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 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?
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
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

                                        I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon — O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih     shantih      shantih


~~
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
from The Waste Land1922

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Read complete poem

"The Waste Land - Death by Water & What the Thunder Said" by T.S. Eliot
(read by Tom O'Bedlam). Courtesy Spoken Verse.

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

April's featured poem


The Penny Blog's featured poem for April 2025:

An April Fool of Long Ago, by Jean Blewett

In powdered wig and buckled shoe,
Knee-breeches, coat and waistcoat gay,
The wealthy squire rode forth to woo
Upon a first of April day.
[...]

https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2014/04/april-fool-jean-blewett.html

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Penny's Top 20 / March 2025


Penny's Top 20

The most-visited poems on  The Penny Blog in March 2025:

  1.  Winter Ghost (Taking a Time Out), Will Dockery
  2.  Penny's Blog 2.0, George J. Dance
  3.  Skating, William Wordsworth
  4.  Large Red Man Reading, Wallace Stevens
  5.  Tired of Waiting, Will Dockery
  6.  Esthetique du Mal, Wallace Stevens
  7.  Spring is like a perhaps hand, E.E. Cummings
  8.  Always Marry an April Girl, Ogden Nash
  9.  Vowels, Arthur Rimbaud
10.  A Brief Winter Sunset, JD Shirk

12.  A Disappointment, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
13.  March is the Month of Expectation, Emily Dickinson 
14.  Song in March, William Gilmore Simms
15.  The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams
16.  Saint Augustine Blues #6, Will Dockery
17.  Ode to Sport, Pierre de Coubertin
18.  March, Folgore de San Geminiano
19.  Spring: An ode, Jane West
20. To My Sister, William Wordsworth


Source: Blogger, "Stats" 

Sunday, March 30, 2025

March / Folgore de San Geminiano


from Sonnets of the Months

March

In March I give you plenteous fisheries
    Of lamprey and of salmon, eel and trout.
    Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas.
With fishermen and fishingboats at ease,
    Sail-barques and arrow-barques and galeons stout,
    To bear you, while the season lasts, far out,
And back, through spring, to any port you please.
But with fair mansions see that it be fill'd,
    With everything exactly to your mind,
        And every sort of comfortable folk.
No convent suffer there, nor priestly guild:
    Leave the mad monks to preach after their kind
        Their scanty truth, their lies beyond a joke.

~~
Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from the Taccuinum Sanitatis, 14th century. Wikimedia Commons.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Spring Sonnet / E.A. Woodward


Spring Sonnet

The drear and lonesome season now has gone
And winter's sadness will be turned to mirth;
The opening buds and smiling flowers each dawn,
Will greet with joy this gladder season's birth.
The earth awakened from the winter's dearth,
The robin chirps with glee o'er grassy lawn;
And wilder spots have felt the sunbeam's worth,
Which charm to gayer pranks the sportive fawn.
All nature smiles in springtime fashion dressed,
The fertile fields resound with plowman's song;
The noisy sparrow builds 'neath eaves her nest,
The woodland trembles with the warbling throng.
New life is born, new hope inspires the breast,
For spring has come and all the world is blest.

~~
E.A. Woodward
from Sonnets and Acrostics, 1916

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

E.A. Woodward biography

Henryk Uziemblo (1879–1949), Springtime Thaw, 1908 (detail). Wikimedia Commons.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Song in March / William Gilmore Simms


Song in March

Now are the winds about us in their glee
Tossing the slender tree;
Whirling the sands about his furious car
March cometh from afar;
Breaks the seal'd magic of old Winter's dreams,
And rends his glassy streams;
Chafing with potent airs, he fiercely takes
Their fetters from the lakes,
And, with a power by queenly Spring supplied,
Wakens the slumbering tide.

With a wild love he seeks young Summer's charms,
And clasps her in his arms;
Lifting his shield between, he drives away
Old Winter from his prey;–
The ancient tyrant whom he boldly braves,
Goes howling to his caves;
And, to his northern realm compelled to fly,
Yields up the victory;
Melted are all his bands, o'erthrown his towers,
And March comes bringing flowers.

~~
William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870)
from
Poems: Descriptive, dramatic, legendary and contemplative, 1853 

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

William Gilmore Simms biography

"Song in March" read for Audiobook Passion.