Eliot and Faulkner's "Love Song" versions!

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace,made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house,and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, "Do I dare?" and,

"Do I dare?"

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -

(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -

(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all -

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all -

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all -

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor,

here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: "That is not what I meant at all."

That is not it, at all.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -

And this, and so much more? -

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?

Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

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.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.

Love Song
(from "Vision in Spring", 1921)
by William Faulkner

Shall I walk, then,

through a corridor of profundities

Carefully erect ( I am taller that [than?] I look)

To a certain door - - -

and shall I dare

To open it?

I smoothe my mental hair

With an oft changed phrase that I revise again

Until I have forgotten what it was at first;

Settle my tie with:

I have brought a book,

Then seat myself with:

We have passed the worst.
Then I shall sit among careful cups of tea,

Aware of a slight perspiring as to brow,

(The smell of scented cigarettes will always trouble me);

I shall sit, so patently at ease,

Stiffly erect, decorous as to knees

Among toy balloons of dignity on threads of talk.
And do I dare

(I once more stroke my hand across my hair )

But the window of my mind flies shut,

I am in a room

Of surcharged conversation, and of jewelled hands;

- - -Here one slowly strips a flower stalk.

It is too close in here, I rise and walk,

Firmly take my self-possession by the hand.
Now, do I dare,

Who sees the light gleam on her intricate hair?

Shall I assume a studied pose,

or shall I stand -----Oh,

Mr. . . .? You are so kind . . ..

Again the door slams inward on my mind.
Not at all…

Replace a cup,Return and pick a napkin up.
My tongue, a bulwark

where a last faint self-possession hides,

Fails me: I withdraw, retreat,

Conscious of the glances on my feet,

And feel as if I trod in sand.
Yet I may raise my head a little while.

The world revolves behind a painted smile.

And now, while evening lies embalmed upon the west

And a last faint pulse of life fades down the sky,

We will go alone, my soul and I,

To a hollow cadence down this neutral street;

To a rhythm of feet

Now stilled and fallen.

I will walk alone,

The uninvited one who dares not go

Whither the feast is spread to friend and foe,

Whose courage balks the last indifferent gate,

Who dares not join the beggars at the arch of stone.
Change and change:

the world revolves to worlds,

To minute whorls

And particles of soil on careless thumbs.

Now I shall go alone,

I shall echo streets of stone,

while evening comes

Treading space and beat, space and beat.

The last left seed of beauty in my heart

That I so carefully tended, leaf and bloom,

Falls in darkness.
But enough. What is all beauty?

What, that I

Should raise my hands palm upward to the sky,

That I should weakly tremble and fall dumb

At some cryptic promise or pale gleam;

- -A sudden wing, a word, a cry?

Evening dies, and now that night has come

Walking still streets, monk-like, grey and dumb;

Then softly clad in grey, lies down again;

I also rise and walk, and die in dream,

For dream is death, and death but fathomed dream.
And shall I walk these streets while passing time

Softly ticks my face, my thinning hair?

I should have been a priest in floorless halls

Wearing his eyes thin on a faded manuscript.
The world revolves.

High heels and scented shawls,

Painted masks, and kisses

mouth and mouth:

Gesture of a senile pantaloon

To make us laugh.
I have measured time,

I measured time

With span of thumb and finger

As one who seeks a bargain:

sound enoughI think, but slightly worn;

There's still enough to cover me from cold,

Momentous indecisions, change

And loneliness.

Does not each fold

Repeat - - the while I measure time,

I measure time -

The word, the thought, the soundless empty gesture

Of him that it so bravely once arrayed?
Spring . . . shadowed walls, and kissing in the dark.

I, too; was young upon a time,

I too; have felt

All life, at one small word, within me melt;

And strange slow swooning wings I could not see

Stirring the beautiful silence over me.
I grow old, I grow old.

Could I walk within my garden while the night

Comes gently down,

And see the garden maidens dancing, white

And dim, across the flower beds?
I would take cold:

I dare not try,

Nor watch the stars again born in the sky

Eternally young.
I grow old, I grow old.

Submerged in the firelight's solemn goldI sit,

watching the restless shadows, red and brown

Float there till I disturb them, then they drown.
I measure time, I measure time.

I see my soul, disturbed, awake and climb

A sudden dream, and fall

And whimpering, crowd near me in the dark.
And do I dare, who steadily builds a wall

Of hour on hour, and day, then lifts a year

That heavily falls in place, while time

Ticks my face, my thinning hair, my heart

In which a faint last long remembered beauty hides?
I should have been a priest in floorless halls

Whose hand, worn thin by turning endless pages,

Lifts, and strokes his face, and falls

And stirs a dust of time heaped grain on grain,

Then gropes the book, and turns it through again;
Who turns the pages through, who turns again,

While darkness lays soft fingers on his eyes

And strokes the lamplight from his brow,

to wake him, and he dies.