In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.įrom the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,Īs I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, song of the bird.Īnd Eliot's use of similar images (also note Eliot's phrase "dry grass singing", which could be an echo to the opening of "Leaves of Grass", namely, "I celebrate myself and sing myself"): Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Eliot's Personal Waste Land, p 19, quoting Eliot in the April 1934 issue of 'The Criterion'):Ģ) The hermit thrush in the pines singing of death:Ī shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. "I am willing to admit that my own retrospect is touched by a sentimental sunset, the memory of a friend coming across the Luxembourg Gardens in the late afternoon, waving a branch of lilac, a friend who was later (so far as I could find out) to be mixes with the mud of Gallipoli". The use of 'lilacs' is probably a specific Verdenal reference, as noted by James Miller in this quote from Eliot: I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,Īnd the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, Here are the ones I'm aware of:ġ) The title and opening lines of Whitman, conjoining the images of spring and lilacs with images of sorrow: In addition to the passage you cite about the "third" who walks beside, there are other echoes as well. I believe that the tie-in with Whitman is the use of elegy: As Whitman's poem is a coming-to-terms with the death of Lincoln, so (part of) TWL is a coming-to-terms with the death of Jean Verdenal. I think that TWL is part biographical and part 'universal themes' (the biographical specifics leading the narrator to the universal realizations). I have thought for a long time that Eliot was specifically alluding to "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd " in TWL. I agree that the passage you cite from Whitman seems to echo lines from TWL. > of "the third" but I don't believe we mentioned Whitman. > We once speculated on this list about what Eliot was > and I am struck by its resonance with the cited passage from TWL. > Someone sent me this passage from "Leaves of Grass" for Memorial Day, Subject: Re: OT - A Whitman/Eliot similarity I never realized how deeply acquainted with and respectful of "Leaves" Eliot was. The gray-brown bird I know, receiv’d us comrades three Īnd he sang what seem’d the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. I had thought of the hermit-thrush in connection with Whitman's lines:Īnd the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me
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