April is the cruelest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire…

Your turn!

Come on kids! Sit up and pay attention.

“Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer...”

Well? We weren’t so quiet over on the Python thread, now were we?

chorus of school children: Sorry, Sir, Mr Cheng, Sir

Some of us need sleep! 

… 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.

Mmm...coffee at the Hofgarten!  Perfect to think upon when it’s so cold here!  [Though I do wonder why he feels the need to go in and out of German in that poem!—thankfully I can read it! ;-)]

I’m more a fan of John Donne, but T S Eliot does take some toping in some respects.

God bless,
Ian.

Now that’s more like it.

Journey Of The Magi

T. S. Eliot

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a
temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This:  were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth,
certainly,

[oops - edit - can’t post whole poem due to copyright restriction. Will put the rest of the poem here in 2016 after copyright expires, or you can look it up yourself]

[three trees—an image of glory, yes? gcc]

[quote author="TS Eliot"]The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

Ah, mornings.  The most hated time of the day :)

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"]

[three trees—an image of glory, yes? gcc]

And don’t underestimate that white horse, either.

Beautiful! :tear:  Thanks, Gordon.

Aside: is it under copyright?  If so, perhaps we can’t quote as much as that?  If it is under copyright, (I believe) AMS could get into some strife.

I know on another BB they have a restriction on poems and songs of one verse.  If people want to post the whole thing, they post a link to it.  The poem can be found here . 

Only concened to ensure AMS remains here!
Ian.

[edit: added link]

Such bliss to find the brilliance of my beloved TS Eliot greeting me on this Forum.

I fell in love with Mr Eliot at the tender age of 16 (and never kissed) when I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Do I dare to quote....I do:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will 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.

I can declare hear and now that anyone who loves TS Eliot’s poetry is worth knowing. Bonds of friendship have been created over far less!

So thank you Gordon for making my day, along with the rain our merciful God has sent to Wagga today.

a very happy and delighted angela

BTW I think ‘Prufrock’ is a good name for a dog? What are my chances of convincing my family the truth of this?

A popular nursery rhyme as it might have been written by Mr Eliot:

A slow coming we had of it,
Just at the worst time of the year:
In spring is the wintriest weather.
With the cock-horses fretful and wanting their sugar,
there were times when we began to wonder
If there was such a place as Banbury.
We would have abandoned the search
But for the promise of the Cross; so we continued
and arrived at evening, not a moment too soon,
Finding the lady; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
Certainly there were bells on her feet, and such bells
Tinkling and partly tinkling,
And her fingers were heavy with many rings.
had we been drawn here by memory before birth or curiosity?
In our ignorance is our understanding.

[quote author="davidould"]
And don’t underestimate that white horse

Hey, davidould, I want to know more about what you think about the horsey. I initially had in mind that final scene with Clint Eastwood in the good, the bad and the ugly, then I thought about the pale rider in Revelation (also by coincidence another Clint movie), then realized the teacher in year 10 said something different again.

then realized I din’t have a clue.

So say some more!

BTW, I reckon TS Eliot proves that a word is worth a thousand pictures.

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"][quote author="davidould"]
And don’t underestimate that white horse

Hey, davidould, I want to know more about what you think about the horsey. I initially had in mind that final scene with Clint Eastwood in the good, the bad and the ugly, then I thought about the pale rider in Revelation (also by coincidence another Clint movie), then realized the teacher in year 10 said something different again.

then realized I din’t have a clue.

So say some more!

BTW, I reckon TS Eliot proves that a word is worth a thousand pictures.

Gordon, it’s past 11pm so I gues there’s only you and me left.

I think it’s an allusion to the RIder on a White Horse (Rev 6:2/19:11). Possibly the field language is of the Elyssian Fields (not unlike Elliot to mix his metaphysics).

[quote author="davidould"]

I think it’s an allusion to the RIder on a White Horse (Rev 6:2/19:11). Possibly the field language is of the Elyssian Fields (not unlike Elliot to mix his metaphysics).

Crikey! Very cool. So it is not only alluding to a Clint movie (Pale Rider) but also a Russell Crowe flick (Gladiator).

[quote author="davidould"]Gordon, it’s past 11pm so I gues there’s only you and me left.

Some of us are still here. Not reading Eliot though, rather the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Gripping stuff. Before that I read William Careys ‘An enquiry into the obligations of Christians ...’, much better.

Afraid I have no Eliot to post, I am an ignoramus on the topic.

Rodos

(Just thought I’d post a note on copyright, as it was mentioned earlier by Ian. As I understand it, TS Eliot is fair game as he’s been dead more than 50 years.

[edit: oops, error (thanks SB below). Died in ‘65, so still covered by copyright -*don’t* post a whole poem]

Anyone more recent, safest to post the link rather than the poem, unless you wrote it yourself.

Mind you, the link you’re posting may be to a website which has broken the law, so you need to work out if you think that is ok.)

oh, and while I’m here…

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.

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"]...a note on copyright, as it was mentioned earlier by Ian. As I understand it, TS Eliot is fair game as he’s been dead more than 50 years.

Sorry, Gordon, T.S. Eliot died in 1965. All of his works are subject to the laws of copyright.

Interestingly, Eliot’s widow endowed St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Rd, Kensington (London) with some of the mega-pounds she received in royalties from the musical, Cats.

Here’s what Eliot had to say on religion, literature and politics:

T.S. ELIOT
(1888-1965)

“I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics.”