Eliot's notes to The Waste Land

Presented here is the full list of notes that Eliot included with The Waste Land. Each can also be accessesed by selecting the poem's "Eliot" links. This page is available in either the notes frame or in the definitions frame (better).

TITLE

•   The Waste Land

PART I

• The Burial of the Dead
• 20)  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
• 23)  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
• 31)   Frisch weht der Wind
• 42)  Oed' und leer das Meer.
• 46)  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
• 60)  Unreal City,
• 63)  I had not thought death had undone so many.
• 64)  Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
• 68)  With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
• 74)  'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
• 76)  'You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--mon frère!'

PART II

• A Game of Chess
• 77)  The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
• 92)  Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
• 98)  As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
• 99)  The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
• 100)  So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
• 115)  I think we are in rats' alley
• 118)   The wind under the door.
• 126)  'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
• 138)  Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

PART III

• The Fire Sermon
• 176)  Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
• 192)  And on the king my father's death before him.
• 196)  But at my back from time to time I hear
• 197)  The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
• 199)  O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
• 202)  Et, O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
• 210)  Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
• 218)  I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
• 221)  Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
• 253)  When lovely woman stoops to folly and
• 257)  'This music crept by me upon the waters'
• 264)  Of Magnus Martyr hold
• 266)   The river sweats
• 279)   Elizabeth and Leicester
• 293)   Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
• 307)   To Carthage then I came
• 308)   Burning burning burning burning
• 309)   O Lord Thou pluckest me out

PART IV

• Death by Water
• Eliot did not have any notes for Part IV

PART V

•   What the Thunder Said
• 357)   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
• 360)  When I count, there are only you and I together
• 366)  What is that sound high in the air
• 401)  Datta: what have we given?
• 407)  Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
• 411)  Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
• 424)  Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
• 427)  Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
• 428)  Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow
• 429)  Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
• 431)  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
• 433)   Shantih shantih shantih

Exploring The Waste Land - [Home] [E-mail] File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002