(I)
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Those who have crossed
(II)
Let me be no nearer
Not that final meeting
(III)
Is it like this
(IV)
In this last of meeting places
(V)
Between the idea
Between the conception
Between the desire
For Thine is
This is the way the world ends
- T.S. Eliot
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© 1997 natural@the-animal.com
I'm not a religious person, Eliot wrote this poem specifically about that topic... but it's a finely written peice of poetry with a good message about "hollow" people, whether they are hollow for lack of religion or just because they don't think or care!
Mistah Kurtz - he dead
A penny for the old guy
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
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
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.
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.
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 -
In the twilight kingdom.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
and the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow Life is very long
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.