… Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
T.S. Eliot was born on this date in 1888 and died in 1965.
“[Poetry] may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”
From the Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
…
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
A good solid Anglo-Catholic Libran Tory: like my kids.