The Waste Land Analysis

The Waste Land

by T. S. Eliot

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis

vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:

Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."

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

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,    

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,

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,                                  

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,

(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.                              

        Frisch weht der Wind

        Der Heimat zu

        Mein Irisch Kind,

        Wo weilest du?

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

"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,                                    

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed' und leer das Meer.

   Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

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.                                                

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.

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,                                                           

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.

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!                           

"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!

"You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!"

II. A GAME OF CHESS

   The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out                                  

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

From satin cases poured in rich profusion;

In vials of ivory and coloured glass

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended                         

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.

Above the antique mantel was displayed

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale                             

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.

And other withered stumps of time

Were told upon the walls; staring forms

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.                       

   "My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

   "What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

"I never know what you are thinking. Think."

   I think we are in rats' alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

   "What is that noise?"

                             The
wind under the door.

"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"

                             Nothing
again nothing.                     

                                                                           "Do

"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

"Nothing?"

   I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"

                                                                             But

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -

It's so elegant

So intelligent                                                         

"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"

I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street

"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?

"What shall we ever do?"

                                             
The hot water at ten.

And if it rains, a closed car at four.

And we shall play a game of chess,

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said -

I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,                         

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.

He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.

You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,

He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.

And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,

He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,

And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.

Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.                       

Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.

Others can pick and choose if you can't.

But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.

(And her only thirty-one.)

I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,

It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.

(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)              

The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.

You are a proper fool, I said.

Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,

What you get married for if you don't want children?

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot -

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.                    

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

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 smoothes 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

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, aetherial 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 ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow

Le Prince d'Aquitaine a 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

NOTES ON "THE WASTE LAND"

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism
of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend:
From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan).<1> Indeed, so deeply am I indebted,
Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than
my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book
itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To
another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced
our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the
two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris.  Anyone who is acquainted with
these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to
vegetation ceremonies.

<1> Macmillan Cambridge.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20.  Cf.  Ezekiel 2:1.

23.  Cf.  Ecclesiastes 12:5.

31.  V.  Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5-8.

42.  Id.  iii, verse 24.

46.  I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot
pack

of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience.

The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose

in two ways:  because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God

of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in

the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor

and the Merchant appear later; also the "crowds of people," and

Death by Water is executed in Part IV.  The Man with Three Staves

(an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily,

with the Fisher King himself.

60.  Cf.  Baudelaire:

     "Fourmillante cite;, cite; pleine de
reves,

     Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le
passant."

63.  Cf.  Inferno, iii.  55-7.

                                  
"si lunga tratta

     di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto

     che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta."

64.  Cf.  Inferno, iv.  25-7:

     "Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,

     "non avea pianto, ma' che di sospiri,

     "che l'aura eterna facevan tremare."

68.  A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74.  Cf.  the Dirge in Webster's White Devil .

76.  V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

II.  A GAME OF CHESS

77.  Cf.  Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.

92.  Laquearia.  V.  Aeneid, I. 726:

     dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et
noctem flammis

                    funalia
vincunt.

98.  Sylvan scene.  V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.  140.

99.  V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, Philomela.

100.  Cf.  Part III, l. 204.

115.  Cf.  Part III, l. 195.

118.  Cf.  Webster:  "Is the wind in that
door still?"

126.  Cf.  Part I, l. 37, 48.

138.  Cf.  the game of chess in Middleton's Women beware
Women.

III.  THE FIRE SERMON

176.  V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192.  Cf.  The Tempest, I.  ii.

196.  Cf.  Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

197.  Cf.  Day, Parliament of Bees:

     "When of the sudden, listening, you shall
hear,

     "A noise of horns and hunting, which shall
bring

     "Actaeon to Diana in the spring,

     "Where all shall see her naked skin . .
."

199.  I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines

are taken:  it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202.  V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210.  The currants were quoted at a price "carriage and
insurance

free to London"; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed

to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

Notes 196 and 197 were transposed in this and the Hogarth Press edition,

but have been corrected here.

210.  "Carriage and insurance free"] "cost,
insurance and freight"-Editor.

218.  Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a
"character,"

is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest.

Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into

the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct

from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman,

and the two sexes meet in Tiresias.  What Tiresias sees, in fact,

is the substance of the poem.  The whole passage from Ovid is

of great anthropological interest:

     '. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra
profecto est

     Quam, quae contingit maribus,' dixisse,
'voluptas.'

     Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti

     Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.

     Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva

     Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu

     Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem

     Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem

     Vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,'

     Dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,

     Nunc quoque vos feriam!' percussis anguibus isdem

     Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.

     Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa

     Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto

     Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique

     Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,

     At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita
cuiquam

     Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto

     Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221.  This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in
mind

the "longshore" or "dory" fisherman, who returns at
nightfall.

253.  V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257.  V.  The Tempest, as above.

264.  The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of

the finest among Wren's interiors.  See The Proposed Demolition

of Nineteen City Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266.  The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here.

From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn.

V.  Gutterdsammerung, III.  i:  the
Rhine-daughters.

279.  V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol.  I, ch.  iv,
letter of De Quadra

to Philip of Spain:

"In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river.

(The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop,

when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert

at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they

should not be married if the queen pleased."

293.  Cf.  Purgatorio, v.  133:

     "Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

     Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma."

307.  V. St. Augustine's Confessions:  "to Carthage
then I came,

where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears."

308.  The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which
corresponds

in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken,

will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism

in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one

of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

309.  From St. Augustine's Confessions again.  The
collocation

of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,

as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:

the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous

(see Miss Weston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357.  This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush

which I have heard in Quebec County.  Chapman says (Handbook of

Birds of Eastern North America) "it is most at home in secluded

woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable

for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and

exquisite modulation they are unequalled."  Its
"water-dripping song"

is justly celebrated.

360.  The following lines were stimulated by the account of one

of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one

of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers,

at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion

that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

367-77. Cf.  Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos:

"Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf
dem

Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang

und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang.

Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige

und Seher hört sie mit Tränen."

402.  "Datta, dayadhvam, damyata" (Give, sympathize,

control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found

in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1.  A translation is found

in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p.  489.

408.  Cf.  Webster, The White Devil, v.  vi:

                                                    ".
. . they'll remarry

   Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider

   Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs."

412.  Cf.  Inferno, xxxiii.  46:

          "ed io sentii
chiavar l'uscio di sotto

          all'orribile torre."

Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p.  346:

"My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my

thoughts or my feelings.  In either case my experience falls within

my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its

elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround

it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul,

the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul."

425.  V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher
King.

428.  V.  Purgatorio, xxvi.  148.

          "'Ara vos prec
per aquella valor

           'que vos guida
al som de l'escalina,

           'sovegna vos a
temps de ma dolor.'

            Poi
s'ascose nel foco che gli affina."

429.  V.  Pervigilium Veneris.  Cf.  Philomela
in Parts II and III.



430.  V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

432.  V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.

434.  Shantih.  Repeated as here, a formal ending to an
Upanishad.

'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation

of the content of this word.