{"id":96442,"date":"2017-08-07T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=96442"},"modified":"2017-08-04T12:51:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T11:51:32","slug":"the-hollow-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/08\/the-hollow-men\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hollow Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
\nA penny for the Old Guy<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I<\/strong>
\nWe are the hollow men
\nWe are the stuffed men
\nLeaning together
\nHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!
\nOur dried voices, when
\nWe whisper together
\nAre quiet and meaningless
\nAs wind in dry grass
\nOr rats’ feet over broken glass
\nIn our dry cellar<\/p>\n

Shape without form, shade without colour,
\nParalysed force, gesture without motion;<\/p>\n

Those who have crossed
\nWith direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
\nRemember us-if at all-not as lost
\nViolent souls, but only
\nAs the hollow men
\nThe stuffed men.<\/p>\n

II<\/strong>
\nEyes I dare not meet in dreams
\nIn death’s dream kingdom
\nThese do not appear:
\nThere, the eyes are
\nSunlight on a broken column
\nThere, is a tree swinging
\nAnd voices are
\nIn the wind’s singing
\nMore distant and more solemn
\nThan a fading star.<\/p>\n

Let me be no nearer
\nIn death’s dream kingdom
\nLet me also wear
\nSuch deliberate disguises
\nRat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
\nIn a field
\nBehaving as the wind behaves
\nNo nearer-<\/p>\n

Not that final meeting
\nIn the twilight kingdom<\/p>\n

III<\/strong>
\nThis is the dead land
\nThis is cactus land
\nHere the stone images
\nAre raised, here they receive
\nThe supplication of a dead man’s hand
\nUnder the twinkle of a fading star.<\/p>\n

Is it like this
\nIn death’s other kingdom
\nWaking alone
\nAt the hour when we are
\nTrembling with tenderness
\nLips that would kiss
\nForm prayers to broken stone.<\/p>\n

IV<\/strong>
\nThe eyes are not here
\nThere are no eyes here
\nIn this valley of dying stars
\nIn this hollow valley
\nThis broken jaw of our lost kingdoms<\/p>\n

In this last of meeting places
\nWe grope together
\nAnd avoid speech
\nGathered on this beach of the tumid river<\/p>\n

Sightless, unless
\nThe eyes reappear
\nAs the perpetual star
\nMultifoliate rose
\nOf death’s twilight kingdom
\nThe hope only
\nOf empty men.<\/p>\n

V<\/strong>
\nHere we go round the prickly pear
\nPrickly pear prickly pear
\nHere we go round the prickly pear
\nAt five o’clock in the morning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Between the idea
\nAnd the reality
\nBetween the motion
\nAnd the act
\nFalls the Shadow
\nFor Thine is the Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

Between the conception
\nAnd the creation
\nBetween the emotion
\nAnd the response
\nFalls the Shadow
\nLife is very long<\/em><\/p>\n

Between the desire
\nAnd the spasm
\nBetween the potency
\nAnd the existence
\nBetween the essence
\nAnd the descent
\nFalls the Shadow
\nFor Thine is the Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

For Thine is
\nLife is
\nFor Thine is the<\/p>\n

This is the way the world ends
\nThis is the way the world ends
\nThis is the way the world ends
\nNot with a bang but a whimper.<\/em><\/p>\n

*********************************<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”<\/li>\n
  2. A…Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the “gunpowder plot” failed.<\/li>\n
  3. Those…Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante’s “Paradiso”.<\/li>\n
  4. Eyes: eyes of those in eternity who had faith and confidence and were a force that acted and were not paralyzed.<\/li>\n
  5. crossed stave: refers to scarecrows<\/li>\n
  6. tumid river: swollen river. The River Acheron in Hell in Dante’s “Inferno”. The damned must cross this river to get to the land of the dead.<\/li>\n
  7. Multifoliate rose: in dante’s “Divine Comedy” paradise is described as a rose of many leaves.<\/li>\n
  8. prickly pear: cactus<\/li>\n
  9. Between…act: a reference to “Julius Caesar” “Between the acting of a dreadful thing\/And the first motion, all the interim is\/Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.”<\/li>\n
  10. For…Kingdom: the beginning of the closing words of the Lord’s Prayer.\u00a9 by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    _________________________________________<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, the seventh and last child of Henry Ware Eliot, a brick manufacturer, and Charlotte (Stearns) Eliot, who was active in social reform and was herself a not-untalented poet. Both parents were descended from families that had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. William Greenleaf Eliot, the poet’s paternal grandfather, had, after his graduation from Harvard in the 1830s, moved to St. Louis, where he became a Unitarian minister, but the New England connection was closely maintained–especially, during Eliot’s youth, through the family’s summer home on the Atlantic coast.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 allpoetry.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Mistah Kurtz-he dead
    \n A penny for the Old Guy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}