By T. S. Eliot

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.

Poet Bio

Arguably the most famous poet of the Modernist movement, T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot revolutionized the art first with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1915 and then with the 1922 publication of his long, difficult poem The Waste Land. He also became famous for his criticism and later for the poems adapted into the Broadway musical Cats. Although born in St. Louis, he spent most of his adult life in England, working first in banking, then in publishing. See More By This Poet