“After the torchlight red on sweaty facesAfter the frosty silence in the gardensAfter the agony in stony placesThe shouting and the cryingPrison and palace and reverberationOf thunder of spring over distant mountainsHe who was living is now deadWe who were living are now dyingWith a little patience Here is no water but only rockRock and no water and the sandy roadThe road winding above among the mountainsWhich are mountains of rock without waterIf there were water we should stop and drinkAmongst the rock one cannot stop or thinkSweat is dry and feet are in the sandIf there were only water amongst the rockDead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spitHere one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountainsBut dry sterile thunder without rainThere is not even solitude in the mountainsBut red sullen faces sneer and snarlFrom doors of mudcracked houses If there were waterAnd no rockIf there were rockAnd also waterAnd water A springA pool among the rockIf there were the sound of water onlyNot the cicadaAnd dry grass singingBut sound of water over a rockWhere the hermit-thrush sings in the pine treesDrip drop drip drop drop drop dropBut there is no water- The Waste Land (ll. 322-358)”

T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot - “After the torchlight red on sweaty...” 1

Similar quotes

“After the torchlight red on sweaty facesAfter the frosty silence in the gardensAfter the agony in stony placesThe crying and the shoutingPrison and place and reverberationOf thunder of spring over distant mountainsHe was living is now deadWe who were living are now dyingWith a little patience”

T.S. Eliot
Read more

“For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted.”

Amy Carmichael
Read more

“Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Read more

“A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal...”

Bertrand Russell
Read more

“Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.”

Aldous Huxley
Read more