by Eliot · Cluster: Imagination · Fragment · Heroic Couplet
Abstract
Aesthetic lyric staging an imagined parting of lovers, the weeping girl turned into a pose for the imagination; love, loss, memory and the artifice of art.
Connections
Topoi: Unattainable Beloved Motifs: Flowers, Autumn Themes & Concepts: Grief and Loss, Romantic Love, Imagination Settings: Garden (2)
Testo integrale / Full text
La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem virgo …
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair —
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise —
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave.
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
POEMS
1920