The
Hollow Men |
||
by
T.S. Eliot in 1925 |
||
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. | ||
. . |
........no more. |