Preludes Poem by T. S. Eliot

Poetry from Poems by T. S. Eliot.

Poems by T. S. Eliot 1920

T. S. Eliot – Preludes Poem

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

Vintrig boulevardscen med hästdroska Painting by Nils Kreuger

Vintrig boulevardscen med hästdroska Painting by Nils Kreuger

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Poems by T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot – Gerontion Poem
T. S. Eliot – Burbank with a Baedeker : Bleistein with a Cigar Poem
T. S. Eliot – Sweeney Erect Poem
T. S. Eliot – A Cooking Egg Poem
T. S. Eliot – Le Directeur Poem
T. S. Eliot – Mélange adultère de tout Poem
T. S. Eliot – Lune de Miel Poem
T. S. Eliot – The Hippopotamus Poem
T. S. Eliot – Dans le Restaurant Poem
T. S. Eliot – Whispers of Immortality Poem
T. S. Eliot – Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service Poem
T. S. Eliot – Sweeney Among the Nightingales Poem
T. S. Eliot – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Poem
T. S. Eliot – Portrait of a Lady Poem
T. S. Eliot – Preludes Poem
T. S. Eliot – Rhapsody on a Windy Night Poem
T. S. Eliot – Morning at the Window Poem
T. S. Eliot – The Boston Evening Transcript Poem
T. S. Eliot – Aunt Helen Poem
T. S. Eliot – Cousin Nancy Poem
T. S. Eliot – Mr. Apollinax Poem
T. S. Eliot – Hysteria Poem
T. S. Eliot – Conversation Galante Poem
T. S. Eliot – La Figlia Che Pianga Poem