by Eliot · Cluster: Alienation · Outsider · Exile
Abstract
Short urban impressionist lyric of damp souls of housemaids and brown fog twisting up the street; modern city, squalor and alienation.
Connections
Motifs: City, Fog and Smoke, Window Themes & Concepts: Alienation Forms & Genres: Lyric Settings: Modern Metropolis
Testo integrale / Full text
Morning at the Window
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
The Boston Evening Transcript
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
When evening quickens faintly in the street,
Wakening the appetites of life in some
And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to La Rochefoucauld,
If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, ‘Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.’