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- The hollow men
- (A penny for the Old Guy)
- (1925)
- Thomas Stearns Eliot
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- 1
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- 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,
- Paralyzed force, gesture without
motion:
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- 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.
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- 2
- 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
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- 3
-
- This is the dead land
- This is the 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.
-
- It is like this
- In death's other kingdom
- Walking alone
- At the hour when we are
- Trembling with tenderness
- Lips that would kiss
- Form prayers to broken stone.
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- 4
-
- 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 kingdom.
-
- In this last of meeting places
- We grope together
- And avoid speech
- Gathered on this bench 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.
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- 5
-
- 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
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- For Thine is the Kindgdom
-
- Between the conception
- And the creation
- Between the emotion
- And the reponse
- Falls the Shadow
-
- Life is very long
-
- Between the desire
- And the spasm
- Between the potency
- And the existence
- And the descent
- Falls the Shadow
-
- For Thine is the Kingdom
-
- For Thine is
- Life is
- For Thine is the
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- 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.
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