The Hollow Men Analysis

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

    

        

            

A penny for the Old Guy

        

    

            

                

I

            

We are the hollow men


We are the stuffed men


Leaning together


Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!


Our dried voices, when


We whisper together


Are quiet and meaningless


As wind in dry grass


Or rats' feet over broken glass


In our dry cellar





Shape without form, shade without colour,


Paralysed force, gesture without motion;





Those who have crossed


With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom


Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost


Violent souls, but only


As the hollow men


The stuffed men.

            

                

II

            

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams


In death's dream kingdom


These do not appear:


There, the eyes are


Sunlight on a broken column


There, is a tree swinging


And voices are


In the wind's singing


More distant and more solemn


Than a fading star.





Let me be no nearer


In death's dream kingdom


Let me also wear


Such deliberate disguises


Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves


In a field


Behaving as the wind behaves


No nearer --





Not that final meeting


In the twilight kingdom

            

                

III

            

This is the dead land


This is cactus land


Here the stone images


Are raised, here they receive


The supplication of a dead man's hand


Under the twinkle of a fading star.





Is it like this


In death's other kingdom


Waking alone


At the hour when we are


Trembling with tenderness


Lips that would kiss


Form prayers to broken stone.

            

                

IV

            

The eyes are not here


There are no eyes here


In this valley of dying stars


In this hollow valley


This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms





In this last of meeting places


We grope together


And avoid speech


Gathered on this beach of the tumid river





Sightless, unless


The eyes reappear


As the perpetual star


Multifoliate rose


Of death's twilight kingdom


The hope only


Of empty men.

            

                

V

            

Here we go round the prickly pear


Prickly pear prickly pear


Here we go round the prickly pear


At five o'clock in the morning.





Between the idea


And the reality


Between the motion


And the act


Falls the Shadow

                    

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception


And the creation


Between the emotion


And the response


Falls the Shadow

                    

Life is very long

Between the desire


And the spasm


Between the potency


And the existence


Between the essence


And the descent


Falls the Shadow

                    

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is


Life is


For Thine is the





This is the way the world ends


This is the way the world ends


This is the way the world ends


Not with a bang but a whimper.

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