Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888 - 1965

2. The poem: The Hollow Men, written in 1925 by Thomas Stearns Eliot. Published the same year.

Mistah Kurtz –he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy.

I
1 We are the hollow men,
We are the stuffed men.
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
5 Our dried voices, when
We whisper together,
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat’s feet over broken glass
10 In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other kingdom
15 Remember us –if at all- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men,
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
20 In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column.
There, is a tree swinging
25 And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
30 In death’s dream kingdom.
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises:
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
35 Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.

III
This is the dead land,
40 This is the cactus land.
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

45 Is it like this,
In death’s other kingdom
Walking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness.
50 Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here,
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars,
55 In this hollow valley,
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech,
60 Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star,
Multifoliate rose
65 Of death’s twilight kingdom.
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go ‘round the prickly pear,
Prickly pear, prickly pear.
70 Here we go ‘round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality,


Between the motion
75 And the act,
Falls the Shadow.

For Thine is the Kingdom.

Between the conception
And the creation,
80 Between the emotion
And the response,
Falls the Shadow.

Life is very long.

Between the desire
85 And the spasm,
Between the potency
And the existence,
Between the essence
And the descent,
90 Falls the Shadow.

For Thine is the Kingdom.

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

95 This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.