T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 173-184
The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
Eliot's note: V. Spenser, Prothalamion. See also TWL line 176, and
see Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion (1596):
Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song....
the two brides attended by river nymphs; compare this with the songs of the
Thames-daughter nymphs, beginning at TWL line 266. See also TWL line
36 and the deadly appearance of Zephyrus, the wind, to the Hyacinth Prince.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
and the dull roots are stirred (TWL 4), when the flotsam has either
floated away or sunk into the banks.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
See Psalm 137:1:
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept
...How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?
Lac Leman is Lake Geneva, Switzerland, site of Lausanne where Eliot was treated
in 1922 for mental exhaustion.
For more WEEPING, compare the lament of a Geneva-conceived monster in
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818):
I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing;
but, feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.
Compare this with TWL lines 39-40:
I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing.
See also Dante, Inferno 34:25:
I did not die, and I alive remained not.
See also Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions 4 (1782), tr. Angela Scholar
(2000):
The sight of Lake Geneva and its admirable shores has always held a particular
charm for me... I abandoned myself, as I walked ...to thoughts of the sweetest
melancholy. ...I was moved to tenderness, I sighed, I wept like a child. How many
times, stopping to weep at my leisure, did I not, perched on a boulder, smile to
see my tears mingling with the waters.
See also Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.390, where Ferdinand is found “sitting
on a bank, weeping”;
and Matthew 26:75, where “...Peter ...wept bitterly” after the cock crowed
(compare TWL line 393: “Co co rico co co rico”);
and John 11:35, where Jesus wept after Lazarus died (compare TWL line 298:
“He wept. He promised ‘a new start'").
For contrast, consider Boredom's eye filled with an unwanted tear in
Charles Baudelaire, Au Lecteur (1867), a poem alluded to at TWL line 76:
You! hypocrite lecteur! —mon semblable, —mon frère!
See also Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield 24 (1766), a passage also
alluded to at TWL line 253: “When lovely woman stoops to folly...”:
Her mother ...felt a pleasing distress, and wept.
See also Isaiah 38:1, where King Hezekiah weeps after being told to “Set thine
house in order” because he is about to die. Compare TWL line 426: “Shall I at
least set my lands in order?”
See also Dante, Purgatorio 26.142 (and compare TWL line 428, quoting
Purgatorio 26.148: “Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.” (“Then hid him in the
fire that purifies them.”)
I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go.
from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)
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