The Waste Land

By

T. S. Eliot

QUOTATION: I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American poet, critic. The Burial of the Dead, The Waste Land (1922).

QUOTATION: And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 383–385).

QUOTATION: I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 228–231).

QUOTATION: Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 43–46).

QUOTATION: “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.”
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), U.S.-born—British poet, critic. The Waste Land, “The Fire Sermon.”

QUOTATION: We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), U.S.-born—British poet, critic. The Waste Land, “What the Thunder Said.”

QUOTATION: At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 215–217).

QUOTATION: These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), U.S.-born—British poet, critic. The Waste Land, “What the Thunder Said.”

QUOTATION: There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 389–391)

QUOTATION: There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
ATTRIBUTION: T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965), Anglo-American critic, poet. The Waste Land (l. 341–343).

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