T.S. Elliot's The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead. 

       A penny for the Old Guy      

  I  We are the hollow men 

We are the stuffed men 

Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. 

Alas! Our dried voices, when 

We whisper together 

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass 

In our dry cellar  

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;  

  Those who have crossed 

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom 

Remember us—if at all—not as lost 

Violent souls, but only 

As the hollow men The stuffed men.      

  II  Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom 

These do not appear: 

There, the eyes are 

Sunlight on a broken column 

There, is a tree swinging 

And voices are In the wind’s singing 

More distant and more solemn 

Than a fading star.

  Let me be no nearer 

In death’s dream kingdom 

Let me also wear 

Such deliberate disguises 

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves 

In a field 

Behaving as the wind behaves 

No nearer—  

  Not that final meeting 

In the twilight kingdom     

   III  This is the dead land 

This is cactus land 

Here the stone images 

Are raised, here they receive 

The supplication of a dead man’s hand 

Under the twinkle of a fading star. 

 Is it like this In death’s other kingdom 

Waking alone 

At the hour when we are 

Trembling with tenderness 

Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.      

  IV  The eyes are not here 

There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars 

In this hollow valley 

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

  In this last of meeting places 

We grope together 

And avoid speech 

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

  Sightless, unless 

The eyes reappear 

As the perpetual star 

Multifoliate rose 

Of death’s twilight kingdom 

The hope only Of empty men.     

   V  Here we go round the prickly pear 

Prickly pear prickly pear 

Here we go round the prickly pear 

At five o’clock in the morning.

  Between the idea 

And the reality 

Between the motion 

And the act 

Falls the Shadow

                                 For Thine is the Kingdom

  Between the conception 

And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow

                                 Life is very long

  Between the desire

And the spasm 

Between the potency 

And the existence 

Between the essence 

And the descent 

Falls the Shadow

                                 For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is 

Life is For 

Thine is the  

This is the way the world ends 

This is the way the world ends 

This is the way the world ends

 Not with a bang but a whimper...