POEMS by T. S. ELIOT (1920).


SWEENEY ERECT
(And the trees about me, let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks groan
with continual surges; and behind me make all a desolation.
Look, look, wenches!)

Paint me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me bold unfractuous rocks,
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Adriane's hair
And swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands
(Nausicaa and Polypheme).
Gesture of orang-outang
Rises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair
Slitted below and gashed with eyes,
This oval O cropped out with teeth:
The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the pillow sleep.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave
Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
Knows the female temperament
And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthened shadow of a man
Is history, said Emerson
Who had not seen the silhouette
Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.)

Tests the razor on his leg
Waiting until the shriek subsides.
The epileptic on the bed
Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

The ladies of the corridor
Find themselves involved, disgraced,
Call witness to their principles
And deprecate the lack of taste

Observing that hysteria
Might easily be misunderstood;
Mrs. Turner intimates
It does the house no sort of good.

But Doris, towelled from the bath,
Enters paddling on broad feet,
Bringing sol volatile
And a glass of brandy neat.

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Flesh and blood is weak and frail
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.

The hippo s feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church never never stir
To gather in its dividends.

The 'potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.

At mating time the hippo's voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Curch, at being one with God.

The hippopotamus's day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way-
The Church can sleep and feed at once.

I saw the 'potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God in loud hosannas.

Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.

He shall be washed as white as snow'
By all the martyr'd virgins kist,
While the trueChurch remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.

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c

POEMS by T.S. Eliot (1920).

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
(And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read and also
in the church of the Laodiceans).

The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.

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JUNG DREAMS - Captions of Pictures.

The deliverance of man from the power of the dragon.- Codex Palatinus Latinus 412 (15th cent).

Heaven fertilizing Earth and begetting mankind.-Thenaud, 'Traite de la cabale'.

Trimurti picture. The triangle symbolizes the tendency of the universe to converge towards the point of Unity. The tortoise represents Vishnu; the lotus growing out of the skull between two flames, Shiva. The shining sun of Brahma forms the background. The whole picture corresponds to the alchemical opus, the tortoise symbolizing the massa confusa, the skull the vas of transformation, and the flower the 'self' of wholeness.- After an Indian painting.

The tortoise; an alchemical instrument.- Porta, De distillationibus (1609).

Telesphorus, one of the Cabiri, the familiaris of Aesculapius: (a) Bronze figure from Roman Gaul; (b) Marble statuette from Austria.

Maria Prophetissa, in the background, the union (coniuncto) of upper and lower.- Maier, Symbola aureae mensae.

King Sol with his six planet-sons.- Bonus, Pretiosa margarita novella (1546).

Mercurius turning the eight-spoked wheel which symbolizes the process. In one hand he holds the telum passionis.- "Speculum veritatis".

Sol et eius umbra. The earth is midway between light and darkness.- Maier, Scruttinium chymicum.

The Anthropos with the four elements.-Russian MS. (18th cent).

Dante being led before God in the heavenly rose .- Illumination for the Paradiso, Canto XXXI. Codex Urbanus Latinus 365 (15th cent).

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A poem by Lord Byron . . . ... . .

(ii) STANZAS TO AUGUSTA

('Though the day of my destiny') 1816.


Though the day of my destiny s over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee

Then when Nature around me is smiling
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
And its fragments are sank in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain-it shall not be its slave!
There is many a pang to pursue me
(They may crush, but they shall not condemn),
They may torture, but shall not subdue me -
'Tis of thee that I think - not of them!

Though human, though didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful 'twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie!

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun -
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than once I could foresee
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee!

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that which I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee!

A Poem by Lord Byron. . . . .....

(III) and Augusta Leigh

(i) STANZAS TO AUGUSTA ("When all around") 1816.

When all around grew drear and dark,
And reason half withheld her ray,
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way -

In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When, dreading to be deemed too kind,
The weak despair - the cold depart!

When Fortune changed, and Love fled far,
And Hatred s shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert thy solitary star
Which rose and set not to the last.

Oh, blest be thine unbroken light!
That watched me as a seraph s eye,
And stood between me and the night,
Forever shining sweetly nigh.

And when the cloud upon us came,
Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray -
Then purer spread its gentle flame,
And dashed the darkness all away!

Still may thy spirit dwell on mine,
And teach it what to brave or brook:
There s more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world s defied rebuke.

Thou stoodst as stands a lovely tree,
That still unbroke, though gently bent,
Still waves with fond fidelity
Its boughs above a monument.

The winds might rend, the skies might pour,
But there thou wert - and still wouldst be
Devoted in the stormiest hour
To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me.

But thy and thine shall know no blight,
Whatever fate on me may fall;
For Heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind - and thee the most of all!

Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken - thine will never break!
Thy heart can feel, but will not move;
Thy soul thou soft, will never shake.

And these, when all was lost beside,
Where found and still are fixed, in thee-
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert - e'en to me! .... . .. Poem dedicated to The Navigator of My Dark Night.

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