{"id":886,"date":"2011-03-06T16:09:50","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T16:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=886"},"modified":"2017-07-12T02:28:24","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T02:28:24","slug":"preludes-by-t-s-eliot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/preludes-by-t-s-eliot\/","title":{"rendered":"Preludes by T. S. Eliot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Preludes<\/h1>\n

by T. S. Eliot<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

The winter evening settles down
\nWith smell of steaks in passageways.
\nSix o’clock.
\nThe burnt-out ends of smoky days.
\nAnd now a gusty shower wraps
\nThe grimy scraps
\nOf withered leaves about your feet
\nAnd newspapers from vacant lots;
\nThe showers beat
\nOn broken blinds and chimney-pots,
\nAnd at the corner of the street
\nA lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
\nAnd then the lighting of the lamps.<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

The morning comes to consciousness
\nOf faint stale smells of beer
\nFrom the sawdust-trampled street
\nWith all its muddy feet that press
\nTo early coffee-stands.<\/p>\n

With the other masquerades
\nThat time resumes,
\nOne thinks of all the hands
\nThat are raising dingy shades
\nIn a thousand furnished rooms.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
\nYou lay upon your back, and waited;
\nYou dozed, and watched the night revealing
\nThe thousand sordid images
\nOf which your soul was constituted;
\nThey flickered against the ceiling.
\nAnd when all the world came back
\nAnd the light crept up between the shutters,
\nAnd you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
\nYou had such a vision of the street
\nAs the street hardly understands;
\nSitting along the bed’s edge, where
\nYou curled the papers from your hair,
\nOr clasped the yellow soles of feet
\nIn the palms of both soiled hands.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

His soul stretched tight across the skies
\nThat fade behind a city block,
\nOr trampled by insistent feet
\nAt four and five and six o’clock;
\nAnd short square fingers stuffing pipes,
\nAnd evening newspapers, and eyes
\nAssured of certain certainties,
\nThe conscience of a blackened street
\nImpatient to assume the world.<\/p>\n

I am moved by fancies that are curled
\nAround these images, and cling:
\nThe notion of some infinitely gentle
\nInfinitely suffering thing.<\/p>\n

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
\nThe worlds revolve like ancient women
\nGathering fuel in vacant lots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preludes by T. S. Eliot I The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,103,408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1900s","category-eliot","category-nature-poems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}