The Hollow Men
                    Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965)



                    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.