T.S. Eliot was born September 26, 1888, 135 years ago. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, first published in June 1915, is a groundbreaking work that left me floored when I first encountered it as a young man. Wonderful, evocative, elegaic, just beautiful. I committed much of it to memory and read all of his work, which I revisit often.

I’m not going to parse the poem here; many learned scholars have done so over the past hundred and eight years. What I will say is that as an eighteen year old, I read this poem and was deeply moved. It was not like any poem I’d read before. Among many memorable images, Eliot writes:

“I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,       
And in short, I was afraid.”

I think this and much of this work speaks for itself and needs no intermediary. I knew as a teenager what Eliot was getting at, felt it in my soul, and still remember that unsettling, exciting moment, and feel it just as keenly over thirty years later.

Happy reading, my friends.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


Let us go then, you and I, 
When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherised upon a table; 
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 
The muttering retreats       
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 
Streets that follow like a tedious argument 
Of insidious intent 
To lead you to an overwhelming question …         
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 
Let us go and make our visit. 

In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,       
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes 
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,         
And seeing that it was a soft October night, 
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;         
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate;         
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions, 
And for a hundred visions and revisions, 
Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

In the room the women come and go         
Talking of Michelangelo. 

And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair, 
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—         
They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!” 
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— 
They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!” 
Do I dare       
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 

For I have known them all already, known them all:— 
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 
I know the voices dying with a dying fall 
Beneath the music from a farther room. 
  So how should I presume? 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—       
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 
Then how should I begin 
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?       
  And how should I presume? 

And I have known the arms already, known them all— 
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 
But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair! 
It is perfume from a dress       
That makes me so digress? 
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. 
  And should I then presume? 
  And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets       
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws 
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!       
Smoothed by long fingers, 
Asleep … tired … or it malingers, 
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?       
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 
Though I have seen my head grown slightly bald brought in upon a platter, 
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; 
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,       
And in short, I was afraid. 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while,         
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 
To have squeezed the universe into a ball 
To roll it toward some overwhelming question, 
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—         
If one, settling a pillow by her head, 
  Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. 
  That is not it, at all.” 

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
Would it have been worth while,         
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 
And this, and so much more?— 
It is impossible to say just what I mean! 
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:       
Would it have been worth while 
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 
And turning toward the window, should say: 
  “That is not it at all, 
  That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 
Am an attendant lord, one that will do 
To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 
Deferential, glad to be of use,         
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 
Almost, at times, the Fool. 

I grow old … I grow old …       
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

I do not think that they will sing to me.         

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown       
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.