The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot

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By T. S. Eliot

Contents

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:ἀποθανεῖνθέλω.”

                    For Ezra Pound
                    il miglior fabbro

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

April is the cruellest month, breeding  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  Memory and desire, stirring  Dull roots with spring rain.  Winter kept us warm, covering  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding  A little life with dried tubers.  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee  With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,  And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,                            10  And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.  Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.  And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,  My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,  And I was frightened. He said, Marie,  Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.  In the mountains, there you feel free.  I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,                                  20  You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  And the dry stone no sound of water. Only  There is shadow under this red rock,  (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  And I will show you something different from either  Your shadow at morning striding behind you  Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.                              30       Frisch weht der Wind       Der Heimat zu       Mein Irisch Kind,       Wo weilest du?“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;  “They called me the hyacinth girl.”  —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,                                    40  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.  Oed’ und leer das Meer.  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,  Had a bad cold, nevertheless  Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,  Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,  (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)  Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,  The lady of situations.                                                 50  Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,  And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,  Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,  Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find  The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.  I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.  Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,  Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:  One must be so careful these days.  Unreal City,                                                            60  Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,  A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,  I had not thought death had undone so many.  Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,  And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.  Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,  To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours  With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.  There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!  “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!                            70  “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,  “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?  “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?  “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,  “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!  “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

II. A GAME OF CHESS

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,  Glowed on the marble, where the glass  Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines  From which a golden Cupidon peeped out                                  80  (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)  Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra  Reflecting light upon the table as  The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,  From satin cases poured in rich profusion.  In vials of ivory and coloured glass  Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,  Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused  And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air  That freshened from the window, these ascended                          90  In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,  Flung their smoke into the laquearia,  Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.  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  The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king  So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale                             100  Filled all the desert with inviolable voice  And still she cried, and still the world pursues,  “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.  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.                        110  “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.  “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.  “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?  “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”  I think we are in rats’ alley  Where the dead men lost their bones.  “What is that noise?”                               The wind under the door.  “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”                               Nothing again nothing.                     120                                                                    “Do  “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember  “Nothing?”     I remember  Those are pearls that were his eyes.  “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”                                                                      But  O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—  It’s so elegant  So intelligent                                                          130  “What shall I do now? What shall I do?”  I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street  “With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?  “What shall we ever do?”                                       The hot water at ten.  And if it rains, a closed car at four.  And we shall play a game of chess,  Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.  When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—  I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,                          140  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME  Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.  He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you  To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.  You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,  He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.  And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,  He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,  And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.  Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.                       150  Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME  If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.  Others can pick and choose if you can’t.  But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.  You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.  (And her only thirty-one.)  I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,  It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.  (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)              160  The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.  You area proper fool, I said.  Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,  What you get married for if you don’t want children?  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME  Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,  And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME  HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME  Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.                    170  Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.  Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

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.  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;               180  Departed, have left no addresses.  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.  But at my back in a cold blast I hear  The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.  A rat crept softly through the vegetation  Dragging its slimy belly on the bank  While I was fishing in the dull canal  On a winter evening round behind the gashouse                           190  Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck  And on the king my father’s death before him.  White bodies naked on the low damp ground  And bones cast in a little low dry garret,  Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.  But at my back from time to time I hear  The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring  Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.  O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter  And on her daughter                                                     200  They wash their feet in soda water  Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!Twit twit twit  Jug jug jug jug jug jug  So rudely forc’d.  Tereu  Unreal City  Under the brown fog of a winter noon  Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant  Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants                                210  C.i.f. London: documents at sight,  Asked me in demotic French  To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel  Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.  At the violet hour, when the eyes and back  Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits  Like a taxi throbbing waiting,  I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,  Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see  At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives                       220  Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,  The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights  Her stove, and lays out food in tins.  Out of the window perilously spread  Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,  On the divan are piled (at night her bed)  Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.  I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs  Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—  I too awaited the expected guest.                                       230  He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,  A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,  One of the low on whom assurance sits  As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.  The time is now propitious, as he guesses,  The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,  Endeavours to engage her in caresses  Which still are unreproved, if undesired.  Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;  Exploring hands encounter no defence;                                   240  His vanity requires no response,  And makes a welcome of indifference.  (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all  Enacted on this same divan or bed;  I who have sat by Thebes below the wall  And walked among the lowest of the dead.)  Bestows one final patronising kiss,  And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .  She turns and looks a moment in the glass,  Hardly aware of her departed lover;                                     250  Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:  “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”  When lovely woman stoops to folly and  Paces about her room again, alone,  She smooths her hair with automatic hand,  And puts a record on the gramophone.  “This music crept by me upon the waters”  And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.  O City city, I can sometimes hear  Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,                             260  The pleasant whining of a mandoline  And a clatter and a chatter from within  Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls  Of Magnus Martyr hold  Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.       The river sweats       Oil and tar       The barges drift       With the turning tide       Red sails                                                          270       Wide       To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.       The barges wash       Drifting logs       Down Greenwich reach       Past the Isle of Dogs.            Weialala leia            Wallala leialala       Elizabeth and Leicester       Beating oars                                                       280       The stern was formed       A gilded shell       Red and gold       The brisk swell       Rippled both shores       Southwest wind       Carried down stream       The peal of bells       White towers            Weialala leia                                                 290            Wallala leialala  “Trams and dusty trees.  Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew  Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees  Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”  “My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart  Under my feet. After the event  He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.  I made no comment. What should I resent?”  “On Margate Sands.                                                      300  I can connect  Nothing with nothing.  The broken fingernails of dirty hands.  My people humble people who expect  Nothing.”       la la  To Carthage then I came  Burning burning burning burning  O Lord Thou pluckest me out  O Lord Thou pluckest                                                    310  burning

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,  Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell  And the profit and loss.                                           A current under sea  Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell  He passed the stages of his age and youth  Entering the whirlpool.                                         Gentile or Jew  O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,                          320  Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces  After the frosty silence in the gardens  After the agony in stony places  The shouting and the crying  Prison and palace 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  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 mudcracked houses                                                           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  But sound of water over a rock  Where the hermit-thrush 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?  When I count, there are only you and I together                         360  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  —But who is that on the other side of you?  What is that sound high in the air  Murmur of maternal lamentation  Who are those hooded hordes swarming  Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth  Ringed by the flat horizon only                                         370  What is the city over the mountains  Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air  Falling towers  Jerusalem Athens Alexandria  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  Whistled, and beat their wings                                          380  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.  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,  Dry bones can harm no one.                                              390  Only a cock stood on the rooftree  Co co rico co co rico  In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust  Bringing rain  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  DA                                                                      400  Datta:what have we given?  My friend, blood shaking my heart  The awful daring of a moment’s surrender  Which an age of prudence can never retract  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  Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor  In our empty rooms  DA                                                                      410  Dayadhvam:I have heard the key  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  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  The sea was calm, your heart would have responded                       420  Gaily, when invited, beating obedient  To controlling hands                                       I sat upon the shore  Fishing, with the arid plain behind me  Shall I at least set my lands in order?  London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down  Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina  Quando fiam ceu chelidon— O swallow swallow  Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolieThese fragments I have shored against my ruins                          430  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.                             Shantih    shantih    shantih  Line 415 aetherial] aethereal  Line 428 ceu] uti— Editor

NOTES ON “THE WASTE LAND”

Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism ofthe poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Graillegend: From Ritual to Romance(Macmillan, Cambridge) Indeed, so deeplyam I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of thepoem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the greatinterest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poemworth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general,one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The GoldenBough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris.Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in thepoem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel2:1.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes12:5.

31. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5-8.

42. Id. iii, verse 24.

46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire:

“Fourmillante cité, cité; pleine de rêves,
Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”

63. Cf. Inferno, iii. 55-7.

                    “si lunga tratta
di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto
che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”

64. Cf. Inferno, iv. 25-7:

“Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
“non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,
“che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

II. A GAME OF CHESS

77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726:

dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.

99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”

126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.

III. THE FIRE SERMON

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.

196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

197. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees:

“When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
“A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
“Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
“Where all shall see her naked skin . . .”

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance free to London”; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

210. “Carriage and insurance free”] “cost, insurance and freight”-Editor.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

‘. . . Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’
Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’
Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem
Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257. V. The Tempest, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches(P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.

279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:

“In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

293. Cf. Purgatorio, v. 133:

“Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”

308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation(Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

309. From St. Augustine’s Confessionsagain. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

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.

357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. 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 unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.

360. 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 memberthan could actually be counted.

366-76. 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 Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

407. 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.”

411. Cf. Inferno, xxxiii. 46:

“ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto
all’orribile torre.”

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.”

424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148.

“‘Ara vos prec per aquella valor
‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”

428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble translation of the content of this word.

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