The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S`io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
The muttering retreats
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, `` What is it? ''
Let us go and make our visit.
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
And indeed there will be time
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;
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
In the room the women come and go
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ``Do I dare?'' and, ``Do I dare?''
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
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--
[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 watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
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.
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ``That is not what I meant at all.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
And turning toward the window, should say:
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
--TS Eliot
