Do you swear to tell the Prufrock, the whole Prufrock, and nothing but the Prufrock?
This is for the many Prufrock enthusiasts, who, chances are, have never seen it. It was edited from the final (published) text of the poem.
"Prufrock's Pervigilium"
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And seen the smoke which rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt sleeves, leaning out of windows.
And when the evening awoke and stared into its blindness
I heard the children whimpering in corners
Where women took the air, standing in entries --
Women, spilling out of corsets, stood in entries
Where the draughty gas-jet flickered
And the oil cloth curled up stairs.
And when the evening fought itself awake
And the world was peeling oranges and reading evening papers
And boys were smoking cigarettes, drifted helplessly together
In the fan of light spread out by the drugstore corner
Then I have gone at night through narrow streets,
Where evil houses leaning all together
Pointed a ribald finger at me in the darkness
Whispering all together, chuckled at me in the darkness.
And when the midnight turned and writhed in fever
I tossed the blankets back, to watch the darkness
Crawling among the papers on the table
It lept to the floor and made a sudden hiss
And darted stealthily across the wall
Flattened itself upon the ceiling overhead
Stretched out its tentacles, prepared to leap
And when the dawn at length had realized itself
And turned with a sense of nausea, to see what it had stirred:
The eyes and feet of men --
I fumbled to the window to experience the world
And to hear my madness singing, sitting on the kerbstone
[A blind old drunked man who sings and mutters,
With broken boot heels stained in many gutters]
And as he sang the world began to fall apart...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas...
-- I have seen the darkness creep along the wall
I have heard my madness chatter before day
I have seen the world roll up into a ball
Then suddenly dissolve and fall away.
END
As you can see the pentameter is less polished and he has taken the rhyming inside the line in this section.
Here's another Eliot poem you've probably never seen, even if you think you've seen them all. This one is entirely unique; he never published or wrote anything else like it.
"The Love Song of St. Sebastian"
I would come in a shirt of hair
I would come with a lamp in the night
And sit at the foot of your stair;
I would flog myself until I bled
And after hour on hour of prayer
And torture and delight
Until my blood should ring the lamp
And glisten in the light;
I should arise your neophyte
And then put out the light
To follow where you lead,
To follow where your feet are white
In the darkness toward your bed
And where your gown is white
And against your gown your braided hair.
Then you would take me in
Because I was hideous in your sight
You would take me in without shame
Because I should be dead
And when the morning came
Between your breasts shoud lie my head.
I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your ears curl back a certain way
Like no one's else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees --
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I had mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.
END
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