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V. What the Thunder Said[1]
After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying 325
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience 330
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink 335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses 345
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water 350
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing 355
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush[2] sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?[3] 360
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman 365
—But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air[4]
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth 370
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria 375
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light 380
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. 385
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings, 390
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico[a]
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain 395
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder 400
Da
Datta: what have we given?[5]
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract 405
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider[6]
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms 410
Da
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key[7]
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison 415
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
Da
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 420
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing,[8] with the arid plain behind me 425
Shall I at least set my lands in order?[b]
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina[9]
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow[10]
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie[11] 430
These fragments I have shored against my ruins[c]
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.[12]
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih[13]
Notes
- ↑ In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe. Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Attis Adonis Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies. [E]
- ↑ This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec Province. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequaled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated. [E]
- ↑ The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted. [E]
- ↑ 367–77 Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Biirger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tranen.” [E] A Glimpse into Chaos: “Already half of Europe, already at least the eastern half of Europe is on the way to chaos, driving drunk on holy delusion along the edge of an abyss and singing to it, drunk songs and hymnals like Dmitri Karamazov sang. Over these songs the commoner laughs scornfully, the saint and seer listens with tears on her cheeks.”
- ↑ “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, I. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489. [E]
- ↑ Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: “. . . they’ll remarry / Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.” [E]
- ↑ Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46: “ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto / all’orrible torre.” (“Below I heard them nailing up the door / Of the horrible tower”). Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346. “My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.” [E]
- ↑ V. Weston: From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King. [E]
- ↑ V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148. “‘Now I petition you, by that kind Power / Escorting you to the summit of the staircase, / At the appropriate time, recall my pain.’ / Then he hid himself in the refining fire.” [E]
- ↑ V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III. [E]
- ↑ V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado. [E]
- ↑ V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.
- ↑ Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is our equivalent to this word. [E]
Commentary
- ↑ The rooster’s crowing portends morning and perhaps the promise of renewal in a new day.
- ↑ The only thing it seems an individual may do faced with the destruction of Western Civilization following World War I. This question is not only asked by the narrator about himself, but also resonates with the reader as a call to personal responsibility in finding meaning and order within one’s self. Renewal begins with the individual.
- ↑ In other words: these “fragments” support the narrator against the total devastation. This idea seems to be at the heart of Eliot’s “mythic method.”
Works Cited
Commentary and some notes are from:
- Mack, Maynard; Dean, Leonard; Frost, William (eds.). Modern Poetry. English Masterpieces. VII (Second ed.). Prentice Hall.
