“The Waste Land” Summary

“The Waste Land” Themes

• 

  The Brokenness and Isolation of Modern Life

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• 

  Death and Rebirth

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• 

  Religion, Spirituality, and Nihilism

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• 

  Sex, Lust, and Impotence

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• Memory and the Past

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Waste Land”

• Before Line 1, Lines 1-7

                                    FOR EZRA POUND
                                  IL MIGLIOR FABBRO
               
   I. The Burial of the Dead
    April is the cruellest month, breeding
  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
  Memory and desire, stirring
  Dull roots with spring rain.
  Winter kept us warm, covering
  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  A little life with dried tubers.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 8-18

  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
  And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
  And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
  Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
  And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
  My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
  And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
  Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
  In the mountains, there you feel free.
  I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 19-30

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
  You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
  And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
  There is shadow under this red rock,
  (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
  And I will show you something different from either
  Your shadow at morning striding behind you
  Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 31-42

    Frisch weht der Wind
                        
  Der Heimat zu
                        
  Mein Irisch Kind,
                        
  Wo weilest du?
  “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
  “They called me the hyacinth girl.”
  —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
  Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
  Oed’ und leer das Meer
  .

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 43-59

  Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
  Had a bad cold, nevertheless
  Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
  Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
  (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
  Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
  The lady of situations.
  Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
  And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
  Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
  Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
  The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
  I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
  Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
  Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
  One must be so careful these days.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 60-76

  Unreal City,
  Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
  A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
  I had not thought death had undone so many.
  Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
  And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
  Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
  To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
  With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
  There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
  “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
  “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
  “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
  “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
  “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
  “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
  “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

  

  

  

  

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• Between Lines 76-77, Lines 77-96

   
   II. A Game of Chess
  The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
  Glowed on the marble, where the glass
  Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
  From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
  (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
  Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
  Reflecting light upon the table as
  The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
  From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
  In vials of ivory and coloured glass
  Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
  Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
  And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
  That freshened from the window, these ascended
  In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
  Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
  Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
  Huge sea-wood fed with copper
  Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
  In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 97-105

  Above the antique mantel was displayed
  As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
  The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
  So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
  Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
  And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
  “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
  And other withered stumps of time
  Were told upon the walls;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 104-116

  And other withered stumps of time
  Were told upon the walls; staring forms
  Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
  Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
  Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
  Spread out in fiery points
  Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
    “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
  “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
    “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
  “I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
    I think we are in rats’ alley
  Where the dead men lost their bones.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 117-139

  “What is that noise?”
                            The wind under the door.
  “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
                             Nothing again nothing.
                                                          “Do
  “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
  “Nothing?”
         I remember
  Those are pearls that were his eyes.
  “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”   
            
                                                                             But
  O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
  It’s so elegant
  So intelligent
  “What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
  “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
  “With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
  “What shall we ever do?”
                                                 The hot water at ten.
  And if it rains, a closed car at four.
  And we shall play a game of chess,
  Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 140-173

  When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
  I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
  HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
  Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
  He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
  To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
  You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
  He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
  And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
  He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
  And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
  Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
  Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
  HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
  If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
  Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
  But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
  You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
  (And her only thirty-one.)
  I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
  It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
  (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
  The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
  You 
  are
   a proper fool, I said.
  Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
  What you get married for if you don’t want children?
  HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
  Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
  And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
  HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
  HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
  Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
  Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
  Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

  

  

  

  

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• Between Lines 173-174, Lines 174-187

       
  III. The Fire Sermon
    The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
  Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
  Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
  Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
  The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
  Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
  Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
  And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
  Departed, have left no addresses.
  By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
  Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
  Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
  But at my back in a cold blast I hear
  The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 188-203

  A rat crept softly through the vegetation
  Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
  While I was fishing in the dull canal
  On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
  Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
  And on the king my father’s death before him.
  White bodies naked on the low damp ground
  And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
  Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
  But at my back from time to time I hear
  The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
  Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
  O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
  And on her daughter
  They wash their feet in soda water
  Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 204-215

  Twit twit twit
  Jug jug jug jug jug jug
  So rudely forc’d.
  Tereu
  Unreal City
  Under the brown fog of a winter noon
  Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
  Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
  C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
  Asked me in demotic French
  To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
  Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 216-231

  At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
  Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
  Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
  I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
  Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
  At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
  Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
  The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
  Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
  Out of the window perilously spread
  Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
  On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
  Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
  I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
  Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
  I too awaited the expected guest.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 232-257

  He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
  A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
  One of the low on whom assurance sits
  As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
  The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
  The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
  Endeavours to engage her in caresses
  Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
  Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
  Exploring hands encounter no defence;
  His vanity requires no response,
  And makes a welcome of indifference.
  (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
  Enacted on this same divan or bed;
  I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
  And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
  Bestows one final patronising kiss,
  And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
  She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
  Hardly aware of her departed lover;
  Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
  “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
  When lovely woman stoops to folly and
  Paces about her room again, alone,
  She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
  And puts a record on the gramophone.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 258-266

  “This music crept by me upon the waters”
  And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
  O City city, I can sometimes hear
  Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
  The pleasant whining of a mandoline
  And a clatter and a chatter from within
  Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
  Of Magnus Martyr hold
  Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 267-292

                 The river sweats
                 Oil and tar
                 The barges drift
                 With the turning tide
                 Red sails
                 Wide
                 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
                 The barges wash
                 Drifting logs
                 Down Greenwich reach
                 Past the Isle of Dogs.
                                   Weialala leia
                                   Wallala leialala
                 Elizabeth and Leicester
                 Beating oars
                 The stern was formed
                 A gilded shell
                 Red and gold
                 The brisk swell
                 Rippled both shores
                 Southwest wind
                 Carried down stream
                 The peal of bells
                 White towers
                                  Weialala leia
                                  Wallala leialala

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 293-312

  “Trams and dusty trees.
  Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
  Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
  Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
  “My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
  Under my feet. After the event
  He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
  I made no comment. What should I resent?”
  “On Margate Sands.
  I can connect
  Nothing with nothing.
  The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
  My people humble people who expect
  Nothing.”
                         la la
  To Carthage then I came
  Burning burning burning burning
  O Lord Thou pluckest me out
  O Lord Thou pluckest
  burning

  

  

  

  

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• Between Lines 312-313, Lines 313-322

       
   IV. Death by Water
  Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
  Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
  And the profit and loss.
                                     A current under sea
  Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
  He passed the stages of his age and youth
  Entering the whirlpool.
                                     Gentile or Jew
  O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
  Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

  

  

  

  

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• Between Lines 322-323, Lines 323-331

         
  V. What the Thunder Said
    After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With a little patience

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 332-360

  Here is no water but only rock
  Rock and no water and the sandy road
  The road winding above among the mountains
  Which are mountains of rock without water
  If there were water we should stop and drink
  Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
  Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
  If there were only water amongst the rock
  Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
  Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
  There is not even silence in the mountains
  But dry sterile thunder without rain
  There is not even solitude in the mountains
  But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
  From doors of mudcracked houses
                                        If there were water
     And no rock
     If there were rock
     And also water
     And water
     A spring
     A pool among the rock
     If there were the sound of water only
     Not the cicada
     And dry grass singing
     But sound of water over a rock
     Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
     Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
     But there is no water

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 361-367

  Who is the third who walks always beside you?
  When I count, there are only you and I together
  But when I look ahead up the white road
  There is always another one walking beside you
  Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
  I do not know whether a man or a woman
  —But who is that on the other side of you?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 368-386

  What is that sound high in the air
  Murmur of maternal lamentation
  Who are those hooded hordes swarming
  Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
  Ringed by the flat horizon only
  What is the city over the mountains
  Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
  Falling towers
  Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
  Vienna London
  Unreal
  A woman drew her long black hair out tight
  And fiddled whisper music on those strings
  And bats with baby faces in the violet light
  Whistled, and beat their wings
  And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
  And upside down in air were towers
  Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
  And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 387-396

  In this decayed hole among the mountains
  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
  There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
  It has no windows, and the door swings,
  Dry bones can harm no one.
  Only a cock stood on the rooftree
  Co co rico co co rico
  In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
  Bringing rain

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 397-424

  Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
  Waited for rain, while the black clouds
  Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
  The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
  Then spoke the thunder
  DA
  Datta:
   what have we given?
  My friend, blood shaking my heart
  The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
  Which an age of prudence can never retract
  By this, and this only, we have existed
  Which is not to be found in our obituaries
  Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
  Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
  In our empty rooms
  DA
  Dayadhvam:
   I have heard the key
  Turn in the door once and turn once only
  We think of the key, each in his prison
  Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
  Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
  Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
  DA
  Damyata:
   The boat responded
  Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
  The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
  Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
  To controlling hands

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 425-435

     I sat upon the shore
  Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
  Shall I at least set my lands in order?
  London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
  Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
  Quando fiam uti chelidon
  —O swallow swallow
  Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
  These fragments I have shored against my ruins
  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
                    Shantih     shantih     shantih

  

  

  

  

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“The Waste Land” Symbols

• 

  Water

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  Fire

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• 

  Tarot Cards

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• 

  Music and Singing

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• 

  The Change of Philomel

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“The Waste Land” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Anachronism

  

  

  

  

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• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Extended Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

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• Onomatopoeia

  

  

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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• Stream of Consciousness

  

  

  

  

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“The Waste Land” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Tubers
• Starnbergersee
• Colonnade
• Hofgarten
• Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch
• Rubbish
• Striding
• Frisch weht der Wind/ Der Heimat zu/ Mein Irisch Kind,/ Wo weilest du?
• Hyacinth
• Oed’ und leer das Meer
• Madame Sosostris
• Clairvoyante
• The drowned Phoenician Sailor
• Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks
• The Hanged Man
• Mylae
• Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère
• Burnished
• Wrought
• Cupidon
• Profusion
• Unguent
• Laquearia
• Sylvan
• Philomel
• Barbarous
• Inviolable
• Jug
• Withered
• Enclosed
• Shakespeherian Rag
• Demobbed
• HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
• Smart
• To bring it off
• Chemist
• Hot gammon
• Nymphs
• Thames
• By the waters of Leman
• Garret
• Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
• Forc’d
• Tereu
• Demotic
• C.i.f. London
• Tiresias
• Perilously
• Combinations
• Divan
• Camisoles, and stays
• Dugs
• Carbuncular
• Bradford millionaire
• Propitious
• Endeavours
• Caresses
• Unreproved
• Indifference
• Foresuffered
• Thebes
• Patronising
• Gropes
• Folly
• Gramophone
• “This music crept by me upon the waters”
• Mandoline
• Magnus Martyr
• Inexplicable
• Ionian
• Leeward
• Spar
• Greenwich / Isle of Dogs
• Weialala leia / Wallala leialala
• Elizabeth and Leicester
• Highbury, Richmond, and Kew
• Moorgate
• Margate
• To Carthage then I came
• Pluckest
• Fortnight
• Gulls
• Gentile
• Reverberation
• Carious
• Sterile
• Sullen
• Sneer
• Snarl
• Wrapt
• Mantle
• Lamentation
• Hordes
• Tolling
• Reminiscent
• Cisterns
• Cock
• Ganga
• Himavant
• Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyatta
• Beneficent
• Solicitor
• Aethereal
• Coriolanus
• Arid
• Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
• Quando fiam uti chelidon
• Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
• Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
• Shantih

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Waste Land”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“The Waste Land” Speaker

“The Waste Land” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “The Waste Land”

More “The Waste Land” Resources

• External Resources

  • "The Waste Land," With Footnotes — This hyperlinked version of "The Waste Land" includes Eliot's original footnotes, as well as additional material unpacking the poem's many (many, many) allusions.

  • T. S. Eliot's Reading — Listen to a recording of T. S. Eliot reading "The Waste Land" out loud.

  • Eliot's Life Story — An in-depth biography and analysis of this groundbreaking poet and his career.

  • The Fisher King and "The Waste Land" — Learn more about the connection between "The Waste Land" and the legends of the Fisher King and Holy Grail.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

  • Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

  • Journey of the Magi

  • La Figlia Che Piange

  • Morning at the Window

  • Portrait of a Lady

  • Preludes

  • Rhapsody on a Windy Night

  • The Hollow Men

  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock