The Poems of T. S. Eliot
Volume I
Collected Poems 1909–1962
Uncollected Poems
The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite
Commentary
Volume II
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
Anabasis
Other Verses
Noctes Binanianæ
Improper Rhymes
Commentary
Textual History
The Poems of
T. S. ELIOT
Volume I
Collected and Uncollected Poems
Edited by
Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue
Contents · Volume I
Title Page
This Edition
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Abbreviations and Symbols
Collected Poems 1909–1962
Prufrock and Other Observations
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The ‘Boston Evening Transcript’
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax
Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange
Poems (1920)
Gerontion
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Sweeney Erect
A Cooking Egg
Le Directeur
Mélange Adultère de Tout
Lune de Miel
The Hippopotamus
Dans le Restaurant
Whispers of Immortality
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
The Waste Land
I. The Burial of the Dead
II. A Game of Chess
III. The Fire Sermon
IV. Death by Water
V. What the Thunder said
Notes on the Waste Land
The Hollow Men
Ash-Wednesday
I. Because I do not hope to turn again
II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
III. At the first turning of the second stair
IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet
V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
VI. Although I do not hope to turn again
Ariel Poems
Journey of the Magi
A Song for Simeon
Animula
Marina
The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
Unfinished Poems
Sweeney Agonistes
Fragment of a Prologue
Fragment of an Agon
Coriolan
I. Triumphal March
II. Difficulties of a Statesman
Minor Poems
Eyes that last I saw in tears
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
Five-Finger Exercises
I. Lines to a Persian Cat
II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier
III. Lines to a Duck in the Park
IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.
V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg
Landscapes
I. New Hampshire
II. Virginia
III. Usk
IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe
V. Cape Ann
Lines for an Old Man
Choruses from ‘The Rock’
I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven
II. Thus your fathers were made
III. The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying
IV. There are those who would build the Temple
V. O LORD, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart
VI. It is hard for those who have never known persecution
VII. In the beginning God created the world
VIII. O Father we welcome your words
IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
Four Quartets
Burnt Norton
East Coker
The Dry Salvages
Little Gidding
Occasional Verses
Defence of the Islands
A Note on War Poetry
To the Indians who Died in Africa
To Walter de la Mare
A Dedication to my Wife
Uncollected Poems
A Lyric
Song (‘If space and time, as sages say’)
A Fable for Feasters
To the Class of 1905
Song (‘When we came home across the hill’)
Before Morning
Circe’s Palace
On a Portrait
Song (‘The moonflower opens to the moth’)
Ballade of the Fox Dinner
Nocturne
First Caprice in North Cambridge
Second Caprice in North Cambridge
Opera
Humouresque
Convictions (Curtain Raiser)
Spleen
First Debate between the Body and Soul
Easter: Sensations of April
Ode (‘For the hour that is left us Fair Harvard, with thee’)
Silence
Mandarins
Goldfish (Essence of Summer Magazines)
Suite Clownesque
The Triumph of Bullshit
Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse
Inside the gloom
Entretien dans un parc
Interlude: in a Bar
Bacchus and Ariadne: 2nd Debate between the Body and Soul
The smoke that gathers blue and sinks
He said: this universe is very clever
Interlude in London
Ballade pour la grosse Lulu
The Little Passion: From ‘An Agony in the Garret’
The Burnt Dancer
Oh little voices of the throats of men
The Love Song of St. Sebastian
Paysage Triste
Afternoon
Suppressed Complex
In the Department Store
Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think?
The Death of Saint Narcissus
To Helen
After the turning of the inspired days
I am the Resurrection and the Life
So through the evening, through the violet air
Introspection
The Engine
Hidden under the heron’s wing
O lord, have patience
In silent corridors of death
Airs of Palestine, No. 2
Petit Epître
Tristan Corbière
Ode (‘Tired. | Subterrene’)
The Death of the Duchess
Song (‘The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch’)
Elegy
Dirge
Those are pearls that were his eyes. See!
Exequy
The Builders
Mr. Pugstyles: The Elegant Pig
Bellegarde
The Anniversary
A Valedictory
Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats
The Country Walk
I am asked by my friend, the Man in White Spats
A Proclamation
A Practical Possum
The Practical Cat
The Jim Jum Bears
The Marching Song of the Pollicle Dogs
Billy M’Caw:
The Remarkable Parrot
Grizabella: The Glamour Cat
In Respect of Felines
LINES Addressed to Geoffrey Faber Esquire, on his Return from a Voyage to the Bahamas, and the Parts about New Spain
Montpelier Row
Let quacks, empirics, dolts debate
AMAZ’D astronomers did late descry
VERSES To Honour and Magnify Sir Geoffrey Faber Kt.;
Long may this Glass endure, and brim with wine
The gourmet cat was of course Cumberleylaude
How the Tall Girl and I Play Together
Sleeping Together
How the Tall Girl’s Breasts Are
Dedication II
Love seeketh not Itself to please
The Waste Land: An Editorial Composite
Commentary
Introduction
“A Beginner in 1908”
Prufrock and Other Observations
Poems (1920)
The Waste Land: Headnote
The Waste Land: Commentary
The Hollow Men
Ash-Wednesday
Ariel Poems
Unfinished Poems
Minor Poems
Choruses from “The Rock”
Four Quartets: Headnote
Four Quartets: Commentary
Occasional Verses
Uncollected Poems
“The End of All Our Exploring”
Bibliography
Index of Identifying Titles for Prose by T. S. Eliot
Index to the Editorial Material
Index of Titles and First Lines
About the Authors
By the Same Author
Copyright
This Edition
1. Arrangement of the Present Edition 2. The Waste Land: A Composite
3. Titles 4. Text of the Poems 5. Spacing and Punctuation
6. TSE on Treatments of his Poems
1. ARRANGEMENT OF THE PRESENT EDITION
This first volume opens with Collected Poems 1909–1962 as issued by T. S. Eliot shortly before his death. There follow the “Uncollected Poems”, which include those published in Poems Written in Early Youth and Inventions of the March Hare, as well as some poems from the manuscript Valerie’s Own Book (for which, see headnote to the Textual History, in Volume II). Also within this first volume is an editorial composite of the drafts of The Waste Land. The Commentary for all these poems then follows.
The second volume contains the children’s book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Eliot’s only sustained translation, Anabasis, each followed by a Commentary. The second volume also includes, within contextual notes, three categories of private verses: “Other Verses”, Noctes Binanianæ and “Improper Rhymes”. The Textual History covers the Collected Poems 1909–1962, the Uncollected Poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Anabasis. Textual details of the Other Verses and Improper Rhymes are incorporated within those sections, and textual details of Noctes Binanianæ appear at the end of that section.
2. THE WASTE LAND: A COMPOSITE
The editorial composite of the drafts of The Waste Land (WLComposite) includes passages excised by Eliot, such as the description of a night on the town at the beginning of Part I, as well as others that were excised by Ezra Pound, such as Fresca’s waking at the beginning of Part III and the original long version of Part IV. Running to 678 lines, as opposed to the 433 of the published poem, the editorial composite has independent line-numbering given in bold, with equivalent line numbers from the published poem running alongside. Where appropriate, the numbering in the Commentary and Textual History appears in the form [III] 246 = 404.
References to the facsimile edition of the drafts of The Waste Land give the page numbers of both the facsimile and its facing-page transcription: “Admonished by the sun’s inclining ray”, WLFacs 38/39.
3. TITLES
Many of Eliot’s poems originated as parts which had been published in other contexts, perhaps separately or in different combinations. What began as autonomous poems became sections and vice versa. Although a distinction has in the past been made between titles of short poems within a collection, given within quotation marks (“The Hollow Men”), and those published as volumes (Ash-Wednesday), this cannot hold firm in Eliot’s case. The first of the Four Quartets, for instance, was originally published within a volume, before appearing as a pamphlet; the others were published in New English Weekly and then as pamphlets before the four were collected. To distinguish one of these manifestations from another implies a change that is more than bibliographical, yet the great majority of references to Burnt Norton or Little Gidding are not specifically to any one manifestation. Nor is it always the case that a poem published separately is more substantial than one that is part of a collection: The Cultivation of Christmas Trees is not a more substantial poem than Gerontion.
Placing a title within quotation marks rather than italicising it offers a certain kind of information (or makes a ruling), but in the vicinity of compacted quotations, that distinction is less useful to the reader than an immediate visual distinction between the words quoted and the identification of their source by title.
When Valerie Eliot inaugurated the editing of Eliot in 1971 with the facsimile edition of The Waste Land, she used italics for titles whether of a short poem or a whole book, throughout her Introduction and Editorial Notes. The present edition follows this example and many other scholarly editions in italicising titles. Poems without authorial titles are referred to by italicising the first line (without additional capitals or quotation marks): The wind sprang up at four o’clock. The four poems entitled Song and the two entitled Ode are distinguished by supplying their opening words in brackets after the title.
Other titles, by any author, are likewise italicised (with the exceptions of the Bible and its constituent books, Johnson’s Dictionary and The Oxford English Dictionary).
4. TEXT OF THE POEMS
The number of printings of Eliot’s poems is so large that first editions, editions published during Eliot’s lifetime and Faber editions necessarily take priority over reprints, posthumous editions and printings overseas or by other houses.
Although Eliot was reluctant to revise after publication, examination has shown that even repeated impressions of the same edition diverge to an unexpected extent. He wrote to Djuna Barnes, 15 Oct 1936: “I have never succeeded in getting a first edition of one of my own books printed without some errors in it, and I sometimes find that when those are corrected new errors appear.” Printers did not always use authoritative texts—a reprint of the cheapest available, The Waste Land and Other Poems, was used by Giovanni Mardersteig to set the limited edition of the poem which sold at ten guineas—and the competence of typesetters varied considerably. So did Eliot’s vigilance as a proofreader. Once errors had been overlooked, they could be perpetuated, the most striking being the absence, from all editions, of the last line of part II of The Hollow Men. Sometimes a new reading was born, apparently because Eliot emended an error without reference to his previous text. Sometimes the Collected Poems was emended but not the Selected Poems (which was handled by different printers). Sometimes Eliot acknowledged that a text was inaccurate and said he would ask for it to be emended but failed to effect the change. In other cases, where accidental changes did not injure the sense, it is impossible to know whether he overlooked or acquiesced in them. Many date from the beginning of his career, and were never subsequently emended. A conservative approach has been adopted towards poems that were reprinted in his lifetime, with the present edition usually following 1963 (some exceptions are discussed in McCue 2012). On the same principle of preferring the final authorised text, the “Uncollected Poems” are given in their last known (or last decipherable) form.
Apart from the addition of new items to Selected Essays, more changes were made in Anabasis after publication than in any other book of Eliot’s, in verse or prose. Published in 1930, i
t was revised, with St.-John Perse’s encouragement, in 1938, 1949 and 1959. The last of these revisions is given in the present edition, with the earlier texts being recorded in the Textual History in Volume II.
At different times Eliot proposed several batches of emendations to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, some of them contradictory. The last authorially supervised text appears to be that of the second edition of the paperback, 1964 pbk.
A striking editorial dilemma is what to do about an error in the dedication to Jean Verdenal which stands at the head of Prufrock and Other Observations, where the date of birth of Eliot’s friend appears as 1889 rather than the historically correct 1890. The dedication has stood for almost a century and it has been thought best not to alter it.
5. SPACING AND PUNCTUATION
In verse that is not in regular stanzas, a line-space that falls between pages may become invisible. If the text is then reset, this can lead to the loss of a space that was intended or the introduction of one that was not. Eliot wrote to Robert Beare, 10 Mar 1953, about such discrepancies in editions of his own work: “Occasionally a strophe has occurred in one edition at the end of the page with nothing to show on the next page that there is meant to be a break at that point. This has been overcome in the Penguin edition of my Selected Poems by an ingenious typographer who has indented the first line of every new strophe. I hope eventually to have my Collected Poems reset with this device.” (Such indents are not general in the Penguin series and appear to have been contrived especially to meet Eliot’s case.)
The Penguin edition of 1948—Eliot’s first British Selected Poems, in the year of his Nobel Prize—indents the opening line of the second and subsequent “paragraphs” of each section of each poem, including single lines (excepting only The Waste Land [III] 311, “Burning”). When Selected Poems was retrieved by Faber and reissued, as a hardback, in 1954, these indents were inherited from the Penguin, which was followed page for page. They also appeared in Faber’s first paperback of the Selected Poems in 1961. The “device” was not completely successful, however, because it was not obvious whether it should be applied, for instance, to an isolated couplet such as
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.