T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), lines 94-110
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
Eliot’s note: “Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.” For
more on the sylvan scene, see Eliot’s first endnotes and their
reference to James Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic
and Religion, 3d Ed. (1914), in turn illustrated by “sylvan landscape” of
J. M. W. Turner, The Golden Bough (1834). For a more complete
context see John Milton, Paradise Lost 137-142 (1667), where Satan
is describing Eden:
...and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie
Theatre Of stateliest view.
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
Eliot’s note: “V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.” See Ovid,
Metamorphoses 6.635-1053 (AD 8; tr. Samuel Garth, John Dryden,
Alexander Pope et al, 1717). Procne, far from home, had been longing
for a visit from her sister Philomela, so her husband Tereus prevailed on
the girls’ father to let Philomela sail home with him.
Now Philomela, scarce receiv'd on board,
And in the royal gilded bark secur'd,
Beheld the dashes of the bending oar,
The ruffled sea, and the receding shore;
When strait (his joy impatient of disguise)
We've gain'd our point, the rough Barbarian cries;
Now I possess the dear, the blissful hour,
And ev'ry wish subjected to my pow'r.
Then, before bringing her home,
the false tyrant seiz'd the princely maid,
And to a lodge in distant woods convey'd;
and there with “rude haste” he raped her. She cried out to her sister
and father in vain but then promised
...Tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den,
Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo thro' the grove...
This provoked the king to cut off her tongue, but she still later told
her sister what had happened by weaving the episode into a wall
tapestry, and she fulfilled her promise further by filling the forest air
with a song of her story after they were all changed into birds, Procne
and Philomela into a nightingale and a swallow (sometimes interpreted
vice versa), Tereus into a hoopoe.
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
Eliot’s note: “Cf. Part III, l. 204,” referencing the nightingale's song at
TWL 203-206:“Twit twit twit / ...jug jug jug jug / so rudely forced /
tereu.” See also John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe (1584):
Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,’ she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)
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