T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot & John Daniel Thieme
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
The title of this poem is a satirical reference to Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Like Eliot’s other satirical quatrains, “Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” and “Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” “Whispers of Immortality” was completed during the summer of 1918 and first published...
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.