Friday, September 9, 2011

La Figlia Che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

--T. S. Eliot

"Thomas Stearns 'T. S.' Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.[3] Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

"The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. He followed this with what have become some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945).[4] He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.[5]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

To hear T. S. Eliot read this poem, click here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15305

3 comments:

kkdither said...

Wow. Whenever you read a master, it is quite evident what elementary crap it is that you're able to produce.

OrbsCorbs said...

Eliot is one of those poets that you have to read with reference books handy. His work is filled with allusions to classical literature and mythology. He used Latin a lot. A very scholarly poet, but I personally prefer street poets.

sylvia said...

and i second that Wow. i'd forgotten how crystal eliot was.

"and in the room the women come and go
speaking of michaelangelo..."

i know nothing.