April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?  Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frish weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl."
-Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.  Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you.  If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You!  hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!"
 

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of seven-branched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion.
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

"What is that noise?"
        The wind under the door.
"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
        Nothing again nothing.
               "Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?"

I remember
Those pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
                But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, walk the street
With my hair down, so.  What shall we do to-morrow?
What shall we ever do?"
        The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said -
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth.  He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She had five already and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot -
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight.
Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food; in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at one;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one-half formed thought to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone.

"This music crept by me upon the waters"
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishermen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

  The river sweats
      Oil and tar
       The barges drift
       With the turning tide
       Red sails
       Wide
        To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
        The barges wash
        Drifting logs
        Down Greenwich reach
        Past the Isle of Dogs.
               Weialala leia
               Wallala leialala

  Elizabeth and Leicester
        Beating oars
        The stern was formed
        A gilded shell
        Red and gold
        The brisk swell
        Rippled both shores
        Southwest wind
        Carried down stream
        The peal of bells
        White towers
                Weialala leia
                Wallala leialala

  'Trams and dusty trees
  Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
        Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
        Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'

  "My feet are Moorgate, and my heart
        Under my feet.  After the event
        He wept.  He promised "a new start."
        I made no comment.  What should I resent?"

  "On Margate Sands.
        I can connect
        Nothing with nothing.
        The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
        My people humble people who expect
        Nothing."
               la la

  To Carthage then I came

  Burning burning burning burning
  O Lord Thou pluckest me out
        O Lord Thou pluckest

        burning
 

IV. Death by Water

Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.  As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering whirpool.
                Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
 

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
                If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
 - But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Why are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is an empty chapel, on the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam:I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

                I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you.  Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
       Shantih shantih shantih
 
 

Eliot: "Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognize in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies."

The Golden Bough was, and still is, a very important anthropological work originally published in London in 1911-1915, seven years before The Waste Land. It describes mankind's primitive traceable origins in methods of worship (pagan and organised religion), sexual practices, rituals, festivals, folklore, magic, taboos and superstitions and their evolutionary paths to modern civilisation's characteristics of moral, ethical, and spiritual values. Its importance to The Waste Land can not be emphasised enough and is perhaps well illustrated by just a single extract that covers all of the principal themes of the poem:

"At the festivals of Adonis, which were held in Western Asia and in Greek lands, the death of the god was annually mourned, with a bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial and then thrown into the sea or into springs; and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day. [Adonis] was believed to come to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence of his worshippers."

In January 1913 a poem named Waste Land by the American poet Madison Cawein (1865-1914) appeared in the Chicago magazine Poetry.  The subsequent writing and publication of Eliot's The Waste Land has led some to believe Eliot was directly inspired by Cawein's poem.  As Eliot's poem is of far greater length, construction and contains far more imagery than Cawein's, the charge of plagiarism is perhaps far too harsh:

Epigraph:


English: "I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae, hanging in her cage, and when the boys asked, "What do you want?" she answered, "I wish to die."

Dedication:

"For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro"

Ezra Pound was a fellow poet and friend of Eliot's and a proof reader and critiquer of The Waste Land before it was published.  Eliot regarded Pound as his superior in their profession.

Italian: "il miglior fabbro"
English: "the better craftsman"

from Dante's The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto XXVI, 115-117:

Italian:
"'O frate' disse, 'questi ch'io ti cerno
col dito', e additò un spirto innanzi,
'fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno'"

English:
"'O brother,' he said, 'he whom I point out,'
And here he pointed at a spirit in front,
'Was of the mother tongue a better craftsman'"

I. Burial of the Dead

The phrase "Burial of the Dead" is from the burial service part of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

The Earth is sterile and instead of being the foundation of vegetation is only a repository for the dead. Earth is the 1st. of the four natural elements.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
Mixing Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

These four opening lines echo the "April", "root", "Lilac/flower", and "rain/shower" imagery of the four opening lines of The General Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour".

The Waste Land reverses the positive, fertile sentiments of Canterbury Tales' opening by portraying April as "cruel", setting the tone of the entire poem.

Also from Shakespeare's The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1, in which a single 10-line passage spoken by Iris links several motifs in the poem including: Ceres the fertility god; "spongy April", the nymphs and "sterile and rocky-hard":

Iris:
"Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas;
Thy turfy mountains where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep;
Thy banks with peonied and twillèd brims
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves,
Whose shadow the dismissèd bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipped vineyard,
And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard"

Also recalls Eliot's own Portrait of a Lady:

"Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)".

Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow

The first six lines of The Waste Land also echo Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Act 3, Scene 1:

Titus:
"O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain
That shall distil from these two ancient ruins
Than youthful April shall with all his showers.
In summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still.
In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow
And keep eternal springtime on thy face"

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

English: "I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, true German."

arch-duke's

The immediate cause of World War I between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo.

This hidden reference to Ferdinand in turn links to Shakespeare's character in The Tempest quoted later in the poem.

Marie

Countess Marie Larisch who met Eliot and recounted this sledding experience that Eliot used verbatim.

Out of this stony rubbish?

From John Donne's Devotions XVIII. Meditation:

"...and now the whole house is but a handful of sand, so much dust, and but a peck of rubbish, so much bone."

Son of man,

From Ezekiel 2:1-8: "And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee."

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

From Ecclesiastes 12:5-7: "Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."

The phrase "Then shall the dust return to the earth" phrase leads on to the next reference.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

From John Donne's Devotions I. Expostulation:

"If I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's hand made me of this dust."

and

Devotions IV. Meditation:

"what's become of man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and consumes himself to a handful of dust."

also Hamlet's soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2:

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

Frish weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

From Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5–8: "Fresh blew the wind to the home-land. My Irish child, where art thou?".

Oed' und leer das Meer.

From Tristan und Isolde, iii, verse 24: "The sea is wasted and empty".

Sosostris

Sesostris was the name of three Pharoahs of the 12th. Dynasty. Its modification to Sosostris may be deliberate to echo the International Distress Signal: S.O.S. - Save Our Souls.

Also from Aldous Huxley's Chrome Yellow published one year before The Waste Land in 1921 that has a male character called Mr. Scogan who dresses as a female gypsy named Sosostris and tells people's fortunes in a tent at a fair:

"Mr. Scogan had been accommodated in a little canvas hut. Dressed in a black skirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief tied round his black wig, he looked sharp-nosed, brown, and wrinkled like the Bohemian Hag of Frith's Derby Day. A placard pinned to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of "Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana." Seated at a table, Mr. Scogan received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement of the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to extend their hands for his inspection. He then examined the palm that was presented him, using a magnifying glass and a pair of horn spectacles. He had a terrifying way of shaking his head, frowning and clicking with his tongue as he looked at the lines. Sometimes he would whisper, as though to himself, "Terrible, terrible!" or "God preserve us!" sketching out the sign of the cross as he uttered the words. The clients who came in laughing grew suddenly grave; they began to take the witch seriously. She was a formidable-looking woman; could it be, was it possible, that there was something in this sort of thing after all?"

With a wicked pack of cards.

The Tarot pack of cards. Eliot associates The Hanged Man with the Hanged God of Frazer and the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V; the One-eyed Merchant with the Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant; and The Man with Three Staves with the Fisher King.

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

From Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2:

Ariel:
"Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade.
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

Eliot also published a collection of poems called the Ariel Poems.

Lady of the Rocks,

Jesus's mother Mary, portrayed in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci (and others) as the Lady of the Rocks.

The Hanged Man.

The Tarot card again, highlighting mankind's dependence on superstitions.

Unreal City,

From Baudelaire's Les Sept Vieillards [The Seven Old Men]:

French: "Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves, Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!"
English: "Crawling city, city full of dreams, where the spectrum during day catches the passer-by."

Perhaps also inspired by the City of God in Plato's The Republic, Book IX, 592:

"'I understand' he [Glaucon] said, "you mean the city whose establishment we have described, the city whose home is in the ideal; for I think that it can be found nowhere on earth.' 'Well' said I [Socrates], 'perhaps there is a pattern of it laid up in heaven for him who wishes to contemplate it and so beholding to constitute himself its citizen.'"

Under the brown fog

Echoes Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes." and Eliot's Morning at the Window: "The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street".

A crowd flowed over London Bridge,

As opposed to the River Thames flowing under London Bridge. Also, together with the following line, descriptive of the crowds seeking to attend the Armistice Day Memorial Service held at Westminster Abbey in November. In the years following the end of World War I the crowds were so vast that they stretched outside of Westminster Abbey down Whitehall and over Westminster Bridge.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

From Dante's Inferno, iii. 55–7:

Italian: "Si lunga tratta di gente, ch'io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta".
English: "There was a row of people so long, that I never thought death had killed so many."

The Inferno describes the author's imagined travels through Hell.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

From Dante's Inferno, iv. 25–27:

Italian: "Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma' che di sospiri, che l'aura eterna facevan tremare."
English: "Here, there was no other cry than sighs, that made the eternal air tremble."

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

The Saint Mary Woolnoth church in the City of London that has had bells since its completion in 1724 that strike on the hour.  The timekeeping is now augmented by a modern clock that projects on the Lombard Street wall of the church.

"O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!

Parody of John Webster's 218. Dirge from The White Devil :

"Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
 Since o'er shady groves they hover,
 And with leaves and flowers do cover
 The friendless bodies of unburied men.
 Call unto his funeral dole
 The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
 To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
 And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm;
 But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
 For with his nails he'll dig them up again."

The Dog of Eliot probably being Sirius the Dogstar of Egypt and echoed later in the "Isle of Dogs" line..

"You!  hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!"

From the preface to Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal (Evil Flowers), a work that deals with the search for beauty in a world regarded as ugly.

English: "You! hypocritical reader! - my fellow man, - my brother!".

II. A Game of Chess

From Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chesse, a controversial Elizabethan play depicting war between England and Spain with England as the white pieces and Spain as the black. In this poem though, the players end in stalemate.

Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women also contains a scene where a game of chess is played by a woman while her daughter-in-law is seduced, every chess move representing a move in the seduction. A line in Middleton's Women Beware Women is explicitly referred to later in this chapter.

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

From Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2:

Enobarbus:
"I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description. She did lie
In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did."

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

From Virgil's Aeneid, I. 726: "dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt".

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

From Milton's Paradise Lost:

"A Sylvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre
Of stateliest view."

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

From Ovid's Metamorphoses: Philomel is the character raped by Tereus and who had her tongue cut out so that she couldn't tell. She was turned into a nightingale. An example of sex without fertility.

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

From Ovid's Metamorphoses: Cf. Part III, l. 204.

I think we are in rats' alley

From Ovid's Metamorphoses: Cf. Part III, l. 195.

"What is that noise?"
 The wind under the door.

Adapted from John Webster's The Devil's Law-Case: "Is the wind in that door still?" but its meaning changed.

"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"

From John Webster's The White Devil

O O O O

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. Hamlet's dying words:

"O, I die, Horatio!
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th’ election lights
On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th’ occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.
O, O, O, O!"

also from Shakespeare's King Lear, Scene 24. Lear's words before he faints:

"And my poor fool is hanged. No, no life.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more.
Never, never, never.—Pray you, undo
This button. Thank you, sir. O, O, O, O!"

also from Shakespeare's Othello, Act 5, Scene 2, as he falls on the bed:

Othello: "O, O, O!"

also from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 5, as he is burned with tapers:

Sir John: "O, O, O!"

also from Shakespeare's Titus & Andronicus, Act 3, Scene 2:

Titus: "O, O, O!"

Shakespeherian

As detailed elsewhere in this critique, the name Shakespeare and the works of Shakespeare are a significant inspiration for much of The Waste Land. It is interesting to note that parts of the draft of The Waste Land that didn't reach publication include the lines:

"And the shaking spears and flickering lights" and
"The campfires shake the spears".

The Shakespearean Rag was a popular song in the US circa 1912.

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

From Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women.

demobbed

"Demobilised" having finished in the Army.

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

The call given at the end of the evening in English public houses to encourage clients to finish their drinks before the pub closes.

Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart...

Eliot's maid Ellen Kellond recounted this story to Eliot in this her usual manner.

thirty-one

Eliot was 31 when he started to write The Waste Land.

bring it off

To have an abortion.

What you get married for if you don't want children?

Ironically, Eliot did not father any children from either of his two marriages.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5:

Ophelia:
"I hope all will be well. We must be patient. But
I cannot choose but weep to think they should lay him
i’ th’ cold ground. My brother shall know of it. And so
I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach!
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night,
good night."

Ophelia later drowns in the play, another example of death by water.

III. The Fire Sermon

Fire is the 2nd. of the four natural elements.

From Buddhist Philosophy: Fire Sermon:

A key feature of Bramanical philosophy was the worship of fire as part of the Vedic rituals. Fire was the voice of the god Agni personified by man, water personified by woman:

"Then The Blessed One, having dwelt in Uruvela as long as he wished, proceeded on his wanderings in the direction of Gaya Head, accompanied by a great congregation of priests, a thousand in number, who had all of them aforetime been monks with matted hair. And there in Gaya, on Gaya Head, the Blessed One dwelt, together with the thousand priests. And there The Blessed One addressed the priests:

'All things, O priests, are on fire. And what, O priests, are all these things which are on fire?'

'The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, that also is on fire.'

'And with what are these on fire?'

'With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.'

'The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire...the nose is on fire; odours are on fire...the tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire...the body is on fire; things tangible are on fire...the mind is on fire; ideas are on fire...mind-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the mind are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, that also is on fire.'

'Perceiving this, O priests, the learned and noble disciple conceives an aversion for the eye, conceives an aversion for forms, conceives an aversion for eye-consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the eye; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, for that also he conceives an aversion. Conceives an aversion for the ear, conceives an aversion for sounds...conceives an aversion for the nose, conceives an aversion for odours...conceives an aversion for the tongue, conceives an aversion for tastes...conceives an aversion for the body, conceives an aversion for things tangible...conceives an aversion for the mind, conceives an aversion for ideas, conceives an aversion for mind-consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the mind; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, for this also he conceives an aversion. And in conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes free, and when he is free he becomes aware that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do, and that he is no more for this world.'

Now while this exposition was being delivered, the minds of the thousand priests became free from attachment and delivered from the depravities.

Here Endeth the Fire-Sermon."

The nymphs are departed.

See references to nymphs here and here.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

From Spenser's Prothalamion:

"Sweete breathing A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot beames, which then did glyster fayre:
When I whom sullein care,
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes Court, and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shaddowes, did aflict my brayne,
Walkt forth to ease my payne
Along the shoare of siluer streaming Themmes,
Whose rutty Bancke, the which his Riuer hemmes,
Was paynted all with variable flowers,
And all the meades adornd with daintie gemmes,
Fit to decke maydens bowres,
And crowne their Paramours,
Against the Brydale day, which is not long:
Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song."

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...

Parody of Psalms 137:1: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion".

Leman is the French name for Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Eliot stayed at Lausanne on the banks of Lake Geneva during a period of convalescence for "psychological problems" where he wrote much of The Waste Land.

Leman is also the name of a street just north of the River Thames in Aldgate, London.

Leman was also an Elizabethan term for "sweetheart" or "lover".

But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of bones

Ovid's Metamorphoses: Part I: "Throw each behind your backs, your mighty mother's bones."

Musing upon the king my brother's wreck

From Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2:

Ferdinand: "Weeping again the King my father’s wreck"

Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.

From Ovid's Metamorphoses: Part III, l. 195.

But at my back from time to time I hear

From Marvell's To His Coy Mistress:

"But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near"

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

From Day's Parliament of Bees:

"When of a sudden, listening, you shall hear,
A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
Acteon to Diana in the spring,
Where all shall see her naked skin".

In this poem though the sound of ancient horns and hunting that brought Acteon to Diana are replaced by the sounds of modern horns and motors that will bring the lascivious Sweeney to the madame Mrs. Porter.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

Eliot: "I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia."

They wash their feet in soda water

Cheap, modern parody of Jesus and the sinner woman who washed his feet with her tears:

Luke 7:37: "And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment."

also other references to the washing of feet with water:

John 13:4: "He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean."

Acts 22:16: "And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord."

Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

From Verlaine's Parsifal:

English: "And oh, those children's voices, singing in the cupola!"

Parsifal, in English is more usually spelled Perceval, and is a character from the Grail legends. He possessed the Grail Cup and the sacred spear (hidden linkage to the Shakespeare quotations in this poem). From the tip of the spear trickles an endless stream of blood.

Tereu

The character Tereus in Ovid's Metamorposes who "So rudely forc'd" himself on Philomel.

C.i.f.. "Cost, Insurance and Freight".

Metropole

A hotel in Brighton and a favourite destination of illicit lovers travelling from London for a 'dirty weekend'.

Tiresias

Tiresias is from Greek legend who was blinded by Athene when he saw her bathing naked. Significantly, from the point of view of this poem, he died by drinking from the well of Tilphusa. In another version that has equal importance to the poem, Tiresias was temporarily changed into a woman to determine which of the two sexes derived the greatest pleasure from making love, and he concluded that it was woman that did.

Eliot: "Tiresias although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

Latin:
"Cum Iunone iocos et 'maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus', dixisse, 'voluptas.'
Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
Vidit et 'est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae',
Dixit 'ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
Nunc quoque vos feriam!' percussis anguibus isdem
Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore."

English:
"Jove, they say, was happy
And feeling pretty good with wine forgetting
Anxiety and care, and killing time
Joking with Juno. “I maintain,” he told her
“You females get more pleasure out of loving
Than we poor males do, ever.” She denied it,
So they decided to refer the question
To wise Tiresias’ judgment: he should know
What love was like, from either point of view.
Once he had come upon two serpents mating
In the green woods, and struck them from each other,
And thereupon, from man was turned into woman,
And was a woman seven years, and saw
The serpents once again, and once more struck them
Apart, remarking: “If there is such magic
In giving you blows, that man is turned into woman,
It may be that woman is turned to man. Worth trying.”
And so he was a man again; as umpire,
He took the side of Jove. And Juno
Was a bad loser, and she said that umpires
Were always blind, and made him so forever.
No god can over-rule another’s action,
But the Almighty Father, out of pity,
In compensation, gave Tiresias power
To know the future, so there was some honour
Along with punishment."

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

From Robert Louis Stevenson's Requiem:

"Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."

Although Eliot says of this line: "This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in mind the 'longshore' or 'dory' fisherman, who returns at nightfall."

Sappho allegedly threw herself into the sea in despair at her unrequited love for Phaon the boatman, further linking the themes of love, water and death. She also wrote erotic poetry to women, hence the term Sapphic, so symbolises a barrier to re-birth in the poem.

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead

From Shakespeare's Two Noble Kinsmen, Act 1, Scene 1:

First Queen:
"We are three queens whose sovereigns fell before
The wrath of cruel Creon; who endured
The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites,
And pecks of crows in the foul fields of Thebes.
He will not suffer us to burn their bones,
To urn their ashes, nor to take th’ offence
Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye
Of holy Phoebus, but infects the winds
With stench of our slain lords. O pity, Duke!
Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword
That does good turns to th’ world; give us the bones
Of our dead kings that we may chapel them."

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

From Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter 24:

"When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her guilt away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom, is-to die."

She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone.

The automatic movement of the woman mirrors the mechanical automation of the gramaphone.

"This music crept by me upon the waters"

From Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2:

Ferdinand: "This music crept by me upon the waters."

Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

Eliot: "The interior of St. Magnus Martyr [church in London] is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.)."

The river sweats

From Wagner's Götterdammerung [The Twilight of the Gods], III. i. The story has a mix of water and fire imagery and death by spear (further hidden linkage to the many Shakespeare quotations in the poem). Significantly also for this section of the poem it also has closing red sky imagery that correlates with Eliot's "red sails":

The three Rhine-daughters are singing and swimming in the River Rhine when Siegfried arrives. He is hunting, but has lost his prey. The Rhine-daughters see the Ring and try to persuade Siegfried to give it to them. Siegfried considers giving it away, but as the Rhine-daughters warn him of the dangers he will face if he does not yield the Ring, he declares he does not care for his life. The Rhine-daughters swim away calling him mad and prophecy that he will lose the Ring.

Siegfried meets up with the rest of the hunting party. They drink and talk until Gunther becomes alarmed at Siegfried's story of his beloved Bruennhilde. Two ravens fly up and circle above Siegfried, portence of imminent doom, then Hagen in an act of revenge plunges his spear into Siegfried's back who shortly dies.

Bruennhilde has a funeral pyre built for Siegfried. She takes the Ring and says that the fire that soon consumes her will cleanse it from the Curse and then the Rhine-daughters can have their gold from the ashes. She ignites the pyre with a torch, mounts her steed and speaking a last greeting to Siegfried she rides into the blazing pyre. The flames instantly blaze up and fill the space before the hall then the Rhine swells up and sweeps over the fire sweeping in the three Rhine-daughters, swimming close to the fire-embers. Hage, alarmed by the appearance of the Rhine-daughters plunges into the flood to keep them away from the Ring and Woglinde and Wellgunde twine their arms round his neck and draw him down below.

On the horizon breaks an increasing red glow. In its light the Rhine is seen to have returned to its bed and the nymphs are circling and playing with the Ring on the calm waters. From the ruins of the half-burnt hall, the men and women perceive with awe the light in the sky, in which now appears the hall of Valhalla, where the gods and heroes are seen sitting together.

Eliot: "The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn."

Elizabeth and Leicester

Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester who was a favourite of the Queen.

Eliot: "Froude's Elizabeth, vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain: In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased."

bells

Whilst Eliot was at the University of Oxford progressing a Doctorate in Philosophy he decided to take up long-term residence in England and confided to his friend and fellow author, Conrad Aiken, how he dreaded returning to Harvard University, Massachusetts "and the College bell, and the people whom one fights against and who absorb one all the same".

'Trams and dusty trees

The first Thames daughters' song.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
   Undid me.

Eliot: From Dante's Purgatorio:

Italian: "Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma."
English: "Remember me, I'm Pia; Siena bore me, I died in Maremma."

"My feet are Moorgate, and my heart

The second Thames daughters' song.

"On Margate Sands.

The third Thames daughters' song.

Eliot stayed at Margate during a period of convalescence for "psychological problems". It was there that he wrote parts of The Waste Land before moving on to Lausanne to continue his writing.

To Carthage then I came

From St. Augustine's Confessions Book 3:

"To Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me."

Burning burning burning burning

See: III. The Fire Sermon

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

From St. Augustine's Confessions:

"Thus it is that thou dost act, O Lord God, for thou lovest souls far more purely than we do and art more incorruptibly compassionate, although thou art never wounded by any sorrow."

Eliot: "The collocation of these two representatives of Eastern and Western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident."

IV. Death by Water

Water here doesn't give life, it takes life away. Short, resolute and uncompromising. Water is the 3rd. of the four natural elements.

As above, linkage to The Fire Sermon, water was personified by woman (fire was male) in the Vedic rituals.

This section is also a repeat of the final verse of Eliot's 1920 poem Dans le Restaurant:

"...Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain:
Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin,
Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.
Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible;
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille."

V. What the Thunder Said

From the Second Brahmana passage of "The Three Cardinal Virtues":

"1. The threefold offspring of Prajapati-gods, men, and devils (asura) - dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (Brahmacarya).

Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: "Speak to us, Sir." To them he spoke this syllable, "Da". "Did you understand?" We did understand," said they. "You said to us, 'Restrain yourselves (damyata).'". "Yes (Om)!" said he. "You did understand."

2. So then the men said to him: "Speak to us, Sir." To them then he spoke this syllable, "Da". "Did you understand?" "We did understand," said they. "You said to us, 'Give (datta).'". "Yes (Om)!" said he. "You did understand."

3. So then the devils said to him: "Speak to us, Sir." To them then he spoke this syllable, "Da". "Did you understand?" "We did understand," said they. "You said to us, 'Be sympathetic (dayadhvam).'". "Yes (Om)!" said he. "You did understand."

This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeating Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, sympathise. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, sympathy."

Thunder brings the promise of rain but fails to provide it. Thunder represents Air, the 4th. of the four natural elements.

Eliot: "In the first part of Part V, three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston's book), and the present decay of eastern Europe....The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka - Upanishad, 5, 1".

Upanishad, 1,1:

"Dawn is the head of the horse sacrificial. The sun is his eye, his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the master might universal. Time is the self of the horse sacrificial. Heaven is his back and the midworld his belly, earth is his footing, - the regions are his flanks and the lesser regions their ribs, the seasons his members, the months and the half-months are their joints, the days and nights are of his body. The strands are the food in his belly, the rivers are his veins, his liver and lungs are the mountains, herbs and plants are his hairs, the rising is his front and the setting his hinder portion, when he stretches himself, then it lightens , when he shakes his frame, then it thunders, when he urinates, then it rains. Speech, verily, is the sound of him."

Also, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 1:

"Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder's voice, which wretched mortals fear"

He who was living is now dead

Reversal of Luke 15:24: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" and Luke 15:32: "It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." and  Revelations 2:8 "And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive".

Here is no water but only rock....But there is no water

Eliot said that these 29 lines are the best part of The Waste Land, the rest of the poem being "ephemeral".

But sound of water over a rock

Here, and elsewhere in the poem, the rock and water imagery may link to several similar Biblical passages, such as 1 Corinthians 10:4: "And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

Eliot: "This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) 'it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats...It's notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.' Its 'water-dripping song' is justly celebrated."

When I count, there are only you and I together

This illusion of "one more member" is often thought to be The Grim Reaper.

Eliot: "The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted."

Murmur of maternal lamentation
Why are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

From Hermann Hesse's Blick ins Chaos:

German: "Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen."

English: "Half of Europe, at least the half of Europe's east, is driving itself into chaos, moving drunkenly in a holy delusion on the verge of disaster and is singing, singing itself into a hymnal stupor with songs like Dmitri Karamasoff sang. People laugh insultedly about these songs, the holy one and the clairvoyant are hearing them with tears."

bats

As blind as Tiresias.

Ganga

The river Ganges in India, regarded as holy.

Himavant

A peak in the Himalayan mountains, where the headwaters of the Ganges are.

DA

In the Hindu sacred book Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, God repeats "DA" three times, once as "Datta", second as "Davadhvam" and third
as "Damyata".

Datta:

English: "Give".

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

From Webster's The White Devil:

"...they'll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs".

Dayadhvam:

English: "Sympathise".

I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

From Dante's Inferno:

Italian: "ed io sentii chiavar l'uscio di sotto all'orribile torre."
English: "And I heard the door be (un)locked under the terrible tower."

Eliot: "Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346: 'My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.'".

a broken Coriolanus

Shakespeare's play Coriolanus in which the tragic hero Coriolanus dies. Of obvious interest to Eliot as he wrote two poems named Coriolan and refers to him in his poem A Cooking Egg:

"And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney."

Damyata

English: "Control".

Fishing, with arid plain behind me

Eliot: "Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King."

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

Possibly inspired by any number of Biblical references including:

Exodus 40:4: "And thou shalt bring in the table, and set in order the things that are to be set in order upon it."

2 Kings 20:1: "In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live."

Psalms 50:21: "These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes."

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina

From Dante's Purgatorio:

Italian: "'Ara vos prec per aquella valor
'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.'
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina."

English: "'I pray ye by the worth
that guides ye up unto the summit of the scale,
in time Remember ye my sufferings.'
With such words he disappeared in the refining flame."

Quando fiam uti chelidon

English: "When shall I be like the swallow".

From the poem Pervigilium Veneris:

Latin: "Quando fiam uti chelidon, ut tacere desinam?
Perdidi Musam tacendo, nec me Phoebus respicit.
Sic Amyclas, cum tacerent, perdidit silentium."

O swallow swallow

From Tennyson's poem "O Swallow, Swallow":

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her guilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce auld fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.

O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died.

Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love,
Delaying as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown:
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest is made.

O tell her, brief is life but love is long,
And brief the sun of summer in the North,
And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

O Swallow, flying from the golden woods,
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee."

Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie

"Prince Aquitaine at the ruined tower".

From Gerard de Nerval's Sonnet El Desdichado [The Disinherited] an author who strongly identified with the Grail legend:

"Je suis le Ténébreux, - le Veuf, - l'Inconsolé,
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la Tour abolie:
Ma seule Etoile est morte, - et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie."

Ile fit you.  Hieronymo's mad againe.

Hieronymo: principal character in Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy who goes mad with grief on finding his son dead. Symbolic of the termination of re-birth.

"Ile fit you": a line spoken by Hieronymo in the play and used in this poem to refit order to the fragments shored against the ruins. Also an appeal to the reader to understand and see the fit of the poem's meaning. Finally, a pun on the remainder of Hieronymo's line ("say no more") which Eliot literally doesn't even say and which signifies the imminent end to the poem:

"BALTHAZAR:
'It pleased you, at the entertainment of the ambassador,
To grace the king so much as with a show.
Now were your study so well furnished,
As, for the passing of the first night's sport,
To entertain my father with the like,
Or any suchlike pleasing motion,
Assure yourself, it would content them well.'

HIERONYMO: 'Is this all?'

BALTHAZAR: 'Ay, this is all.'

HIERONYMO: 'Why then, I'll fit you; say no more.'"

"Hieronymo's mad againe" was an early sub-title to Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. Hieronymo, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, confounded his adversaries with feigned madness though there was actually skill, method and design in the apparent madness. As Polonius said in Hamlet: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it". I think Eliot clearly wishes to convey this same sentiment to the reader of this poem in this line: though the poem at first reading may seem like an amorphous mass of crazy images, especially if the reader is unaware of all the literary references, there is in fact great form, meaning and purpose to the structure and content of the whole poem.

Shantih shantih shantih

Formal alliterative ending to an Upanishad (Hindu holy poem), loosely meaning: "The Peace that passeth all understanding".