The Waste Land | Page 6

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? 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

- 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 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
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.
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 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 400 DA
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 410 DA
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 420 The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
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 a la tour

abolie 430 These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then
Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
Line 416 aetherial] aethereal
Line 429 ceu] uti - Editor
NOTES ON "THE WASTE LAND"
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).<1>
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 Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone
who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the
poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
<1> Macmillan]