Let the old ways go

A New Year is here once more,
With its visions of future promise.
The old ways passed by,
And a fresh start, there for the taking.
All is optimism;
Gloom is gone!
Looking forward to the innocent blossoming of spring
Blooming into a youthful, balmy summer.
But the world does not change.
That beautiful vision of new cleanness
Comes from within;
From the hope for a better world,
And a desire to let the old ways go.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
 

A penny for the Old Guy

        I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Note: The two epigraphs to the poem, are allusions to Joseph Conrad's character in Heart of Darkness, and to Guy Fawkes, attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament.
Eliot describes how we, the living, will be seen by "Those who have crossed". The last line alludes to, amongst some talk of war, the actual end of the Gunpowder Plot: not with its planned bang, but with Guy Fawkes's whimper, as he was caught, tortured and executed on the gallows.

Season of Lights

Dunes of vapors from crackers rise,
Engulf, as odorous airs resound
Effusing joys to all abound
Pearls of gleams in these autumn nights
Adorn our lives else trite
With sparklers that motley skies
As soaring spirits of powder wander
Let us thank the heavenly might,
In this festive season of lights.

Sonnet 100

In night when colors all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light;
The eye a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having powers of sight,

Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense,
Doth forge and raise impossibility:

Such as in thick depriving darknesses,
Proper reflections of the error be,
And images of self-confusednesses,
Which hurt imaginations only see;

And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,
Which but expressions be of inward evils.

October

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

Life

I made a posy, while the day ran by;
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.

But time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition :

Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day;
Yet sug’ring the suspicion.

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.

I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.

Petra

It seems no work of Man's creative hand

by labor wrought as wavering fancy planned

But from the rock as if by magic grown

eternal, silent, beautiful, alone

Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine

where erst Athena held her rites divine

Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane

that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain

But rose-red as if the blush of dawn

that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn

The hues of youth upon a brow of woe

which Man deemed old two thousand years ago

match me such marvel save in Eastern clime

a rose-red city half as old as time