by Eliot · Cluster: Melancholy · Suffering · Pain and Suffering
Abstract
Lyric of remembered eyes in death’s dream kingdom; grief, division, the golden vision and derision; mortality and memory.
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori Motifs: Eyes and Sight, Death, Dreams Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Memory and Time, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Eyes that last I saw in tears
Eyes that last I saw in tears
Through division
Here in death’s dream kingdom
The golden vision reappears
I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction.
This is my affliction
Eyes I shall not see again
Eyes of decision
Eyes I shall not see unless
At the door of death’s other kingdom
Where, as in this,
The eyes outlast a little while
A little while outlast the tears
And hold us in derision.
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells
Swinging between life and death
Here, in death’s dream kingdom
The waking echo of confusing strife
Is it a dream or something else
When the surface of the blackened river
Is a face that sweats with tears?
I saw across the blackened river
The camp fire shake with alien spears.
Here, across death’s other river
The Tartar horsemen shake their spears.