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.