Prufrock and Other Observations | Page 3

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Prufrock and Other Observations
by
T. S. Eliot
To Jean Verdenal 1889-1915
Certain of these poems appeared first in "Poetry" and "Others"
Contents
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Portrait of a Lady
Preludes

Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The Boston
Evening Transcript
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax

Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al
mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche
giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the
sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain
half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in
one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To
lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"


Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow
smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue
into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in
drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a
soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along
the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be
time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you
meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the
works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred
indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the
taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I
dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in
the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing
thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will
say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the
universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions
which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the
evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with
coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath

the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I
have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you
in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a
pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should
I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how
should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are
braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with
light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so
digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And
should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched
the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves,
leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors
of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by
long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the
floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I
have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head
(grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and
here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness
flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and
snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
And