Preludes LitChart

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Preludes
POEM TEXT 36 You curled the papers from your hair,
37 Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
I 38 In the palms of both soiled hands.
1 The winter evening settles down
IV
2 With smell of steaks in passageways.
39 His soul stretched tight across the skies
3 Six o’clock.
40 That fade behind a city block,
4 The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
41 Or trampled by insistent feet
5 And now a gusty shower wraps
42 At four and five and six o’clock;
6 The grimy scraps
43 And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
7 Of withered leaves about your feet
44 And evening newspapers, and eyes
8 And newspapers from vacant lots;
45 Assured of certain certainties,
9 The showers beat
46 The conscience of a blackened street
10 On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
47 Impatient to assume the world.
11 And at the corner of the street
12 A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
48 I am moved by fancies that are curled
49 Around these images, and cling:
13 And then the lighting of the lamps.
50 The notion of some infinitely gentle
II 51 Infinitely suffering thing.
14 The morning comes to consciousness
52 Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
15 Of faint stale smells of beer
53 The worlds revolve like ancient women
16 From the sawdust-trampled street
54 Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
17 With all its muddy feet that press
18 To early coffee-stands.
19 With the other masquerades
20 That time resumes, SUMMARY
21 One thinks of all the hands
22 That are raising dingy shades I
23 In a thousand furnished rooms. The winter evening begins to quiet down, signaled by the smell
of steaks cooking, which wafts through side-streets. It's six
III o'clock. The end of the day is smoky like the burnt-out stubs of
24 You tossed a blanket from the bed, used cigarettes. And now the rain and wind blow the dirty
scraps of dead leaves around your feet, along with thrown-
25 You lay upon your back, and waited;
away newspapers blown through empty, undeveloped plots of
26 You dozed, and watched the night revealing
land. The rain can be heard beating on broken blinds and
27 The thousand sordid images chimney pots, and at a street-corner there's a lonely cab-horse
28 Of which your soul was constituted; steaming in the cold and stamping its hooves. And then gas-
29 They flickered against the ceiling. powered street lamps are lit.
30 And when all the world came back II
31 And the light crept up between the shutters The morning begins to wakes up, with the stale but not too
32 And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, strong smell of beer from the street, which is covered with
33 You had such a vision of the street sawdust that has been trampled by muddy feet rushing to buy
34 As the street hardly understands; an early coffee. Along with all the other illusions that daily
35 Sitting along the bed’s edge, where routine makes people go through again, one is also prompted to
think about all the hands pulling up dirty blinds in thousands of
furnished rooms all over the city.
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III are "dirty," and their foot soles are "yellow," implying disease.
You threw the blanket off of your bed, lay on your back and It's as if the city itself is passing on a contagion to the people
waited for something to happen. You dozed, and watched the who live in it.
night reveal thousands of perverted, squalid images, images Note how the people in "Preludes" also lack any distinguishing
that in fact make up your soul. They could be seen flickering on features and are instead reduced to their body parts. This
your bedroom ceiling. And when you woke up and the world underscores the sense of anonymity created by modern life. All
became familiar again, you could see light peeking through the these people are living together in this space, but that doesn't
window shutters, and hear sparrows tweeting in the gutters make them part of a meaningful community. Instead, the urban
outside. But at that moment you experienced a vision of the world seems to erase their identities, making them into just a
street, which was so strange that even the street could hardly bunch of "feet" and "hands."
understand it. At the time, you were sitting on the edge of your
bed, curling your hair; or perhaps you were holding your This use of synecdoche further implies that people are
yellowing feet in your hands. alienated even from controlling their own bodies, which
robotically follow the routines required of modern urban living.
IV People are going through the same motions day after
His soul was spread out tightly across the skies, which could be day—opening the blinds, getting coffee, trudging off to
seen fading as the sun set behind a city block. This soul was also work—without really thinking about what they're doing. In this
trampled by hurrying feet at four, five, and six o'clock. At these way, cities alienate people not just from one another, but also
times one can also see stubby fingers stuffing pipes with from themselves—that is, from their individual wants, needs, and
tobacco, evening newspapers on sale, and eyes looking around desires.
with expressions of self-assurance. Beneath all this the street
has a conscience, which wants eagerly to come forth into the While the human beings in "Preludes" lack emotion, identity, or
world. agency, the environment itself is personified. Note how the
"evening settles down" and the "morning comes to
I am moved by the ideas that I've associated with these images, consciousness." This suggests that the emotions that have been
ideas that are difficult to get rid of, above all the vague notion of drained from the human characters have been transferred
something that is infinitely gentle, but which is always suffering. instead to their surroundings. It's as if awareness itself is too
Wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh at the thought heavy a burden for modern people to bear, and so needs to be
of what I've just described. The worlds will go on following their carried by something larger (that is, by the world itself). In
cycles like old women, who can be seen collecting fuel in empty, poem IV, this then extends beyond simple "consciousness" to a
undeveloped plots of land. moral “conscience”—the street seems to possess an awareness
of morality that human beings in this world have lost.
This “conscience” is further conceived of in religious terms as a
THEMES “soul," which is "stretched tight across the sky” and which is also
"trampled" by the "insistent feet" of the city's inhabitants. The
ALIENATION AND URBAN DECAY decaying atmosphere of the city is therefore a moral sin: city-
“Preludes” critiques the alienating effects of modern dwellers have "trampled" this universal soul, which
urban life—something the poem argues is encompasses them as part of the sky encompassing the earth.
characterized by drudgery and loneliness. Urban society, the Perhaps this mindless trampling is the reason why, although a
poem suggests, isolates people from one another, ultimately new moral conscience is "Impatient to assume the world," the
erasing their individuality and even eroding human morality poem ends without any return to morality. Human beings first
itself. have to break out of their patterns of behavior, but refuse to do
so. Women return to the routine of "gathering fuel," and the
The city in the poem is presented as a filthy, desolate place.
poem's reader, addressed in the second person, can only
There are “grimy scraps” of “withered” leaves blowing around,
"laugh."
newspapers thrown to the sidewalk, and “broken blinds and
chimney-pots.” The streets smell of steak, smoke, and stale
beer, and the shades in people's homes are "dingy." The most Where this theme appears in the poem:
abundant product of urban life, it seems, is waste and decay. • Lines 1-13
At first the city also seems abandoned; no people are • Lines 14-23
mentioned save for the vague reference to “your feet,” creating • Lines 24-38
an almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of desertion. And when • Lines 39-47
people do appear, they're just as dirty and dismal as the city • Lines 52-54
they live in: their "muddy feet" trample the ground, their palms

THE NATURE OF TIME However, the poem never explicitly mentions these events.
Each of the poems within “Preludes” relates the Although the allusion to Jesus implies that the stale routine of
routines taking place in a modern city at a specified earthly life can be redeemed, the poem is ambiguous about
time of day: first the evening, then the morning, then the night, such a possibility actually happening. It ends by drawing a
and finally the afternoon. The poems see modern life as being comparison between city routine and an infinite timescale:
artificially controlled by the clock, which leads to people “worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel.” This hints
following unnatural routines day after day instead of living at the possibility that, in its repetitions, modern life is actually
freely and in the moment. not a huge break from past behavior. Instead, time is cyclical,
and modern people are actually following ancient universal
Poems I and II are the most focused on daily routine. Poem I is patterns. This comparison is paired with a bitter “laugh,”
specifically set on a “winter evening” at “Six o’clock” and however, and the poem leaves it to the reader to conclude
describes the streets as largely “vacant.” This poem begins and whether this is some profound truth about the nature of time
ends by describing events that happen every day: people or just a cynical joke about the inevitable suffering of humanity.
cooking dinner and the lighting of gas-powered street lamps.
By sandwiching the first poem between these repetitive
Where this theme appears in the poem:
activities, Eliot stresses the control that clock-based routines
have over the lives of city-dwellers. • Lines 1-13
This idea is expanded on in poem II, which details morning • Lines 14-23
• Lines 39-54
routines and has numerous echoes of the first poem, such as
“smell of steak”/“smells of beer”; the feet of the cab-horse
stamping and the “muddy feet” going to buy coffee; the “lighting
of the lamps” in the streets; and people “raising dingy shades” LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
to illuminate rooms. Through these echoes, the speaker
stresses the fact that even at different times of day behavior is LINES 1-4
repetitive and cyclical—an idea that, in turn, stresses people's The winter evening settles down
limited freedom in the modern world. With smell of steaks in passageways.
However the second poem also calls this routine a Six o’clock.
“masquerade.” A masquerade was originally a formal ball in The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
which guests wore masks and took part in dances, whose steps "Preludes" begins with a juxtaposition
juxtaposition. The first line establishes
were learned by heart. The repetition necessary to do this is an almost romantic tone by personifying the "winter evening"
similar to the repetitive routines of modern life described in the as settling down and relaxing, which might lead the reader to
“Preludes.” “Masquerade” can mean a disguise or mask, and as expect a poem focused on the calming joys of nature. However,
such further implies that the speaker considers clock-time to line 2 goes immediately in another direction, evoking quite the
be merely an illusion. In other words, the modern notion of time opposite: the "smell of steaks in passageways" is something
is unnatural and false, created arbitrarily to structure people's resolutely urban. The abrupt third line—"Six o'clock."—then
lives. brutally cuts short any illusions of this being a reflective nature
This urban routine reaches a peak in poem IV, with “four and poem. Instead, it's located firmly within a modern industrialized
five and six o’clock” compressed together in one line, followed city, with routines structured around the clock.
by three quick examples of what typically occurs at these times: The poem thus almost immediately destabilizes readers'
men stuff their pipes for a late smoke, evening newspapers are expectations. In a way, the poem positions its readers in a state
published, and the vague statement “eyes / Assured of certain similar to that of the people the poem will go on to describe—a
certainties” (which may be a shorthand for the self-assured, state in which they lack control over their own lives and feel
self-satisfied looks exchanged by followers of such a clock- swept up by the bustling city surrounding them.
based routine).
The fourth line—"The burnt-out ends of smoky days."—echoes
However alongside this intense depiction of clock-based time is the second line's images of steaks cooking, which produce
the introduction of Christian imagery: the “soul stretched tight smoke, with its metaphor comparing "smoky" evenings to the
across the skies” is likely an allusion to Jesus's crucifixion, "burnt-out ends" of cigarettes. This is also the first reference to
implying that just as the skies enclose the city, urban routine is trash in the poem, which views urban life primarily as
enclosed within an overarching Christian timeline. The scale of composed of what is thrown away, rather than what is created.
this timeline dwarfs the “masquerade” of urban life: it is The heavy use of sibilance in these lines ("ssettless ... smell ...
“infinit[e],” containing the Fall, Crucifixion, and Last Judgement, steakss ... pass
ssagewayss ... Sixx ... smoky dayss") mimics the sizzling
and then extending into the afterlife. sound of steaks frying as well as the inhalations and exhalations

of smokers, positioning the reader among the city-sounds being human being in the poem, and also the first of many uses of
described. synecdoche
synecdoche. This technique dehumanizes the people being
The meter of lines 1, 2, and 4 is iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter. This means described, referring only to their body-parts rather than any
there are four iambs per line, a.k.a. poetic feet that follow an distinguishing feature of a particular individual. The poem sees
unstressed-stressed
stressed beat pattern. For example, here is the city-dwellers as an inseparable mass who simply follow
breakdown of line 1: routines without really thinking about them.
The meter of these lines continues the iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter
The win
win- | ter eve- | ning set
set- | tles down begun the lines above, with a few exceptions. Line 6 is written
in dimeter, meaning there are just two beats in this line:
As with the natural imagery in line 1, perhaps this relatively
familiar meter is meant to lull the reader into a false sense of The gri
gri- | my scr
scraps
aps
security—to make readers think they're getting into a classical,
regularly structured poem. It may also be meant to imitate the This line is thus much shorter than those that surround it. The
repetitive routines seen as essential to city life. However the same was true of line 3 ("Six o'clock") and will be true of line 9
short line 3 violently disrupts this rhythm and is just the first of ("The showers beat"). The insertion of these shortened lines
many such lines to do so, indicative of the way that the destabilizes the meter, forcing the reader to constantly
structure of urban life—with its designated working readjust their reading of the poem.
hours—interrupts natural rhythms.
LINES 9-13
LINES 5-8 The showers beat
And now a gusty shower wraps On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
The grimy scraps And at the corner of the street
Of withered leaves about your feet A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And newspapers from vacant lots; And then the lighting of the lamps.
The poem continues to paint a dirty and dismal city scene. The The final lines of poem I begin with a depiction of rain beating
weather is grim, but not out of the ordinary or awe-inspiring in against "broken blinds and chimney-pots." The use of
its might; a "gusty shower" is no epic storm. Instead it is alliter
alliteration
ation of "b
beat ... broken blinds" and the plosive /p/ of
something typical—certainly unpleasant, but ultimately "chimney-p pots" echo the sounds made by droplets of rain
forgettable. Images of trash also abound in these lines: "grimy striking hard objects, almost making this into a moment of
scraps" of "withered leaves" and thrown-away "newspapers" onomatopoeia
onomatopoeia.
from "vacant lots" (undeveloped real-estate). These images These lines also have the most extensive use of end-rh
end-rhyme
yme in
further evoke ideas of death: "scraps" can also refer to the poem I: "beat" and "street" rhyme (and also rhyme with "feet" in
uneaten bones of animals; a living thing withers when it is long line 7), as do "stamps" and "lamps." The first set of rhymes,
dead; the usefulness of newspapers dies soon after publication, combined with the /b/ alliteration, mimic the sound of rain
when the news they relate becomes old hat; and vacant lots are beating down and of "feet" striking the pavement. Put
pieces of land that have gone to seed. All in all, the speaker differently, the insistent "eet" sound itself evokes the repetitive
clearly does not have much affection for urban life. beat of the rain or of those footsteps on the ground. The
The rh
rhyming
yming couplet of "wraps"/"scraps" in lines 5 and 6 is a second set of rhymes—"stamps" and "lamps"—connect the
compression of this whole idea, and suggests that the city has a stamping of cab-horses with the lighting of gas-streetlamps,
deadening effect on the people who live there: the city-dweller almost as if the former is a signal for the latter.
is wrapped, as if clothed or bandaged, entirely in discarded Polysyndeton ("And
And at the corner ... And then the lighting") is
objects, which conceal their natural humanity and originality. also used in lines 11-13 in reference to the impatient stamping
The enjambment here further echoes this idea of being of the cab-horse and the lighting of the streetlights. This
wrapped up, with each line spilling over—or, perhaps, wrapping repetition creates the sensation of a mindless routine (this
over—onto the next: happens, then this happens) followed out of blind habit. The
only emotional reaction is that of the horse, which feels
... a gusty shower wr
wraps
aps "lonely"; the subtle implication is that human beings are already
The grimy scrscraps
aps too alienated to feel anything about their situation at all.
Of withered leaves about your feet
Poem I ends with alliteration on the /l/ sound ("llighting of the
And newspapers ...
lamps"). Light traditionally symbolizes knowledge, so this
phrase might hint that a sort of awakening is about to
Line 7's reference to "your feet" is also the first mention of a
occur—that the city-dweller might make some sort of conscious

recognition of this dismal state, might realize how terrible this a rigid daily schedule. Basically, people base their daily
life is. Of course, this does not come to pass. lives—waking up, getting coffee, going to work, and coming
home—on the clock. Here however, the poem introduces the
LINES 14-18 possibility that this idea of time is simply an illusion.
The morning comes to consciousness It does this by calling the daily repetitions that "time resumes" a
Of faint stale smells of beer "masquerade," a word meaning a disguise or mask. It is also
From the sawdust-trampled street worth noting that "Masquerade" originally referred to a formal
With all its muddy feet that press ball in which guests wore masks and took part in dances, whose
To early coffee-stands. steps were learned by heart. The repetition necessary to do
As in line 1 (in which "The winter evening settles down"), line 14 this is similar to the repetitive routines of modern life described
uses personification in its description of the natural world. in the poem. The use of the word "masquerades" thus stresses
Now, "The morning comes to consciousness." In other words, it the artificiality of clock-time and, as such, of all the repetitive
is the start of a new day. The word "consciousness" takes up the actions associated with it.
implication in line 13 ("And then the lighting of the lamps") of an Line 19 is thus a turning point in the poem, a fact embodied by
imminent breakthrough in self-awareness—but rather than its meter: instead of following the usual iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter, or
applying this awareness to the city-dwellers, it is the city itself simply being cut short of one or more feet (as in lines 3, 6, 9,
that comes to this "consciousness." It is as if the city wakes up and 18), it is formed of three trochees (stressed
stressed-unstressed),
before its hungover citizens, who are still asleep thanks to last plus an extra stressed syllable dangling at the end of the line:
night's beer (the "stale" smell of which lingers). This idea that
the environment is more alive and aware than its occupants will With the | oth
other | mas
masquer- | ades
be developed later in "Preludes." It hints at the way that urban
life tramples down on people's individuality and even on their Appropriately for a line concerned with re-configuring notions
humanity itself. of time and its rhythms, this is the first time in the poem where
The opening lines of poem II echo many of the images from the iambic rhythm is replaced with a totally different meter.
poem I. Here these are the "smells of beer" vs. the earlier "smell Poem II ends on another one of clock-time's "masquerades":
of steaks," and the phrase "muddy feet" vs. "about your feet." the "hands / That are raising dingy shades / In a thousand
On that note, synecdoche once more reduces people to furnished rooms." Yet again, synecdoche emphasizes people's
anonymous body parts; their "feet" charge off, as if with a will anonymous body parts rather than their distinguishing
greater than their owners', to "early coffee-stands," li as individual features. This image also recalls the "lighting of the
desperately as wild animals to a muddy watering hole. All of lamps" that ended poem I. The people introducing morning
these echoes of the earlier poem further emphasize the light into their rooms are perhaps also set for the introduction
repetitiveness of urban routines that are performed of what light typically represents: new knowledge. However, as
unconsciously. The poem makes it sound as if people were poem III goes on to describe, the nature of knowledge becomes
machines, and that any sense of freedom and spontaneity has much more unstable once the poem transitions from the city's
been quashed by urban life. exterior to the isolated interiors of individuals' own rooms.
Ultimately these first five lines of poem II reinforce the idea of
modern humankind established in the first poem: as an LINES 24-29
anonymous mass acting on unconscious instinct. The regular You tossed a blanket from the bed,
iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter emphasizes the repetitive rhythm of You lay upon your back, and waited;
trampling feet. Line 18 is composed of three feet instead of You dozed, and watched the night revealing
four, however, as if mimicking the fact that "muddy feet" come The thousand sordid images
to a halt only once they reach the satiety offered by "coffee- Of which your soul was constituted;
stands." They flickered against the ceiling.
LINES 19-23 Poem III is the only part of "Preludes" to focus on an individual
person. This person—implied to be a woman from the later
With the other masquerades references to the "papers" in her hair—is in bed, alternately
That time resumes, sleeping and staring at the ceiling. To better understand what is
One thinks of all the hands happening here, note that this is an allusion to a scene from the
That are raising dingy shades novel Bubu de Montparnasse by Charles Louis-Philippe. In this
In a thousand furnished rooms. scene, a prostitute named Berthe has just gotten up from her
Before this point, "Preludes" has been focused on one idea of unmade bed and "ses idées étaient couchées en tas dans sa
time: clock-time, which organizes modern city life according to tête" (roughly translated: her thoughts lay heaped confusedly

in her head). there are around them at the time.
Eliot transforms this ordinary confusion into the hallucinogenic The rhyme between "shutters"/"gutters" is the only couplet in
"sordid images" that "flickered against the ceiling." This is the poem III. Shutters keep light out, while gutters take waste
poem's first shift away from documenting external reality to water away. The rhyme here helps draw readers' attention to
depicting more ambiguous, dreamlike, even visionary, these words, and to emphasize the poem's idea that, instead of
spectacles. The fact that these vague, undefined "images" productively absorbing or giving anything to the environment,
constitute the woman's "soul," which is usually considered the individuals in the city are fenced off from what's around them.
most personal and unique part of a person, serves to stress the The most vivid interactions this character has are her own
flattening of individual personality that takes place due to visions, which are likely delusions. The "vision of the street," like
modern life: her "soul" lacks any definite features. Moreover, by the "sordid images" mentioned in line 27, remains undefined.
being described as flickering "against the ceiling" like a film The fact that the "street hardly understands" this vision of it,
being projected, it is as if her soul exists outside her own body. implies that the vision is utterly distinct from reality. Once
This is a greater degree of alienation than even in poems I and more this stresses the theme of alienation, which separates city
II; this woman is alienated not just from other people, but from dwellers from one another, even isolating them to such an
herself. extent that they begin to misperceive and misunderstand the
The opening lines jolt the reader out of the impersonal tone of visible environment around them. Line 34 also establishes,
poems I and II by directly addressing them as "You," a shift in through another example of personification
personification, the idea that the
focus emphasized by the use of anaphor
anaphoraa throughout the next city itself is more conscious and aware than the people living in
few lines. As the sole example of an individual described in any it, whom alienation has drained of personality.
detail, this figure becomes emblematic of the lives of all
individuals in the modern metropolis. She is passive, doing LINES 35-38
nothing in these five lines but lying on her back, waiting, dozing Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
and finally watching. This continues the idea that urban life You curled the papers from your hair,
makes people into passive and limited beings. Further Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
connections to the previous poems abound in the use of the In the palms of both soiled hands.
word "sordid," which recalls adjectives like "dingy," "grimy," The unsettling image of this women sitting on the edge of her
"stale," and "muddy" from poems I and II. bed and holding the "yellow soles" of her feet in her "soiled
However, aside from the focus on an individual, this poem has hands" is an allusion to "The Leper" by the Victorian poet
another significant difference from the first two: its meter. Algernon Charles Swinburne, which contains the following
Lines 25, 26, and 28 all have one syllable too many, e.g.: lines: "She, sitting edgewise on her bed, / Holding her feet ... I sit
still and hold / In two cold palms her two cold feet. / Her hair,
You la
layy | upon
on | your back | and wait
wait- | ed; half grey half ruined gold." This poem ends with a twist that the
lady, who is the speaker's object of affection, and whose feet he
These extra syllables create feminine endings, evoking the lazy, is embracing, has in fact been dead six months, as a result of
stress-free state of waiting, still groggy and halfway between leprosy.
sleep and waking. Eliot's alluding to the other poem performs two functions here.
Firstly it once more stresses the passivity of the isolated
LINES 30-34
individual (what could be more passive than being dead?);
And when all the world came back secondly, it adds the idea of disease to the imagery of decay and
And the light crept up between the shutters dirt that crops up throughout the poem. This second idea is also
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, stressed by the description of her feet as "yellow," a color
You had such a vision of the street associated with bruises and festering wounds, as well as several
As the street hardly understands; specific diseases (e.g., yellow fever). It is as if the city itself is
Lines 30-32 all begin with "And." This use of anaphor
anaphoraa (which is passing on a disease to those who live in it.
also another example of polysyndeton
polysyndeton) reflects the state of the The fact that she is on the "bed's edge," rather than standing up
woman lying on her bed, as she passively absorbs the sounds of or lying in it, stresses the fact that she is in between waking and
"sparrows in the gutters." The fact that "the world" and "light" dreaming states, able to perceive reality, such as the twittering
are the subjects of the verbs "came" and "crept" further sparrows, but also experiencing strange visions. The choice to
emphasizes the person's passivity: it is only on line 32 that she focus on the woman's "soiled feet" and "hands" recalls "your
is the actual subject of a verb ("heard"), which, like "dozed," "lay," feet," "muddy feet" and "insistent feet," as well as the "hands ...
"waited," and "watched," is not a self-propelled activity: people raising dingy shades" the "fingers stuffing pipes" and the order
don't choose to hear things, but will hear whatever sounds to "Wipe your hand across your mouth." In this image, the two

most essential appendages for living a mobile, creative life way of life described in parts I, II, and III can be redeemed.
(hands perform a huge range of tasks, feet carry people where However, the poem then immediately calls this hopeful idea
they need to go) are reduced to passivity, holding one another, into question; the skies are fading "behind a city block," as if the
while sitting static on a bed. window of opportunity for redemption is closing, and more
The meter here varies once more. Lines 36 and 37 return to importantly the "soul" is "trampled by insistent feet."
iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter, but 35 is as follows: trochee
trochee, iamb, iamb, Enjambment here again echoes the lines' content, as line 41
spondee (stressed
stressed-stressed
stressed): seems to trample over the line break:
Sit
Sitting | along
long | the bed’s | edge, where Or trampled by insistent feet
At four ...
And line 38 has an anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed
stressed,
da da DUM), iamb, and spondee: This use of synecdoche is also yet another instance of
"Preludes" describing people as led unthinkingly by their body
In the palms | of both | soiled hands
hands. parts, which here has the serious consequence of trampling
humankind's only chance of redemption! Finally, the
This uneven meter mirrors the idea of this woman being accumulation of clock times on line 42 implies that, far from
suspended between stable reality (embodied by the regular being close to ending, all this mindless routine is only
meter), and wild fantasy (embodied by the exceptions to this accelerating. The polysyndeton here ("four and five and six")
meter). Also note the use of enjambment in these lines: further adds to the sensation of a monotonous routine piling
up; there is no escape for city-dwellers from the endless
... the bed’s edge, where drudgery of urban life, drudgery that goes on and on at every
You curled the papers from your hair, hour.
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms ... LINES 43-47
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
This further adds to the poem's feeling of instability. The And evening newspapers, and eyes
phrases do not match up with the line breaks, creating a Assured of certain certainties,
sensation of teetering unease as this woman sits on the edge of The conscience of a blackened street
her bed. Impatient to assume the world.
Lines 43 to 45 use a variety of techniques to emphasize the
LINES 39-42
mindless, monotonous routine referenced in line 42 ("At four
His soul stretched tight across the skies and five and six o'clock;"). Line 43 uses sibilance to suggest the
That fade behind a city block, abundance of smoky "fingers stuffing pipes"—
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock; And sh
short square fingerss sstuffing pipess,
Poem IV begins with the second mention of a "soul." A "soul"
was first mentioned in line 28, in reference to the anonymous —as does line 45, as if to evoke the whispers of the "certainties"
woman described in section III. This time the "soul" belongs to on which everybody agrees:
an unidentified man, and the language implies that the image of
a "soul stretched tight across the skies" is a Christian one. Ass
ssured of certain certaintiess,
"Stretched tight" recalls the taut skin of Jesus pinned to the
cross, and the fact that it stretches "across the skies," which is "Eyes" in line 43 and "certainties" also form a half-rh
half-rhyme
yme or
an impossible position for a human to be in, hints at something slant rh
rhyme
yme, possibly hinting at eyes winking at each other to
larger than human, large enough to encompass the skies indicate their shared knowledge.
themselves. The most abundant technique here, however, is polysyndeton
The enjambment of line 39—"... across the skies / that fade (and sometimes anaphor
anaphoraa) of "and," which picks up on the same
..."—reflects this idea of stretching as well as the immensity of technique of line 42 ("four and five and six") to create a sense of
the skies themselves, as one phrase stretches across the line piling up, of endless monotony:
break to the next. On that note, the "skies" are often a symbol
for Heaven. Finally, in Christian theology, Jesus is a redeemer And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
of humankind's sins. At this point the poem thus seems to And evening newspapers, and eyes
gesture towards the possibility that the filthy, dehumanizing

This repetitive use of a bland connective, used to link things city, undermines its carefully established sense of reality.
which need have no logical connection (unlike contrasting These lines imply that the city represents only an illusion of
connectives, such as "however," which only make sense if there reality—an idea first evoked with the reference to city routines
is a link between the ideas being contrasted), mimics the being nothing more than "masquerades" in line 19. City life is
dehumanized, repetitive routine of simply doing things (like not real life or natural life, the poem seems to be
smoking pipes and reading the evening newspaper) for the sake saying—something also suggested by the appearance of visions
of it. Again, the implication is that city-dwellers are going in poem III, by the Christian imagery earlier in poem IV, and by
through the motions of life, having been zapped of their the increasing personification of the environment at the
individuality. expense of human characters.
The vagueness of "certain certainties" recalls similarly vague The reference in lines 50 and 51 to the "notion of some
references to the woman's "vision" in poem III and the "sordid infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing" is so vague as to be
images" making up her soul. While being very detailed in its impossible to reliably interpret. However, it does reinforce the
descriptions of physical and material objects, such as rubbish, poem's earlier Christian imagery by placing the city
body parts, and buildings, "Preludes" is very vague whenever it scenes—with all their unnaturally segmented clock-
focuses on psychological, mystical, or religious themes. Perhaps time—within an infinite timeline (just as Christianity follows an
this is in order to suggest a moral and spiritual vacuum in the infinite timeline, since God existed before creation and will
heart of the modern world. exist for eternity). Moreover, the fact that this "thing" is both
Such vagueness continues with lines 46 and 47, which extend "gentle" and "suffering" recalls the figure of Christ, who was
the personification of the environment seen at the start of also both "gentle" and "suffering."
poem IV: Again, though, this is all very ambiguous: the exact nature of
infinity and its relevance to daily life are not established by the
The conscience of a blackened street poem. Whether the awareness that there is a deeper timeline
Impatient to assume the world. than that of repetitive and dehumanizing clock-time will
actually have an effect on re-humanizing or redeeming
Both begin to endow the environment with the moral values humankind is impossible to determine. Put differently, the
absent from the human characters, so the "skies" contain a poem does not clarify whether realizing that there is more than
crucified "soul," and here and "street" has a "conscience," a step- this artificial city life will actually do anything to restore the
up from the morning's "consciousness" (line 14) because of its humanity of the dismal, robotic city-dwellers.
moral connotations. Crucially however, this conscience is
The meter of these lines is highly irregular, which is appropriate
"impatient to assume the world," meaning that it is currently
given its separate status from the rest of the poem. Line 48 is
absent, like an actor waiting to come onstage.
roughly, trochaic pentameter
pentameter, an inversion (with an extra foot
foot)
Lines 45 - 47 are standard iambic tetr tetrameter
ameter, but lines 43 and of the regular meter. It can be read differently, but it is certainly
44 are unusual. The former has five stressed syllables ("And a big difference from the steadiness of the line preceding it:
short | square fing
fing- | ers stuff
stuff- | ing pipes
pipes") whereas the latter
only has three ("And eve- | ning newsnews- | papers, | and eyes
es"). I am | mo
movved by | fan
fancies | that are | curled
Perhaps this is meant to subtly undermine the regularity
implied by "certainties," which, as with everything related to Here is line 47 for comparison:
routine in "Preludes," is considered a "masquerade."
LINES 48-51 Impa

pa- | tient to | assume
sume | the world
world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
In basically flipping the meter of these lines, it is as if the
Around these images, and cling:
speaker is pulling off the curtain—and revealing that what is
The notion of some infinitely gentle
behind it is totally different from what readers have come to
Infinitely suffering thing.
expect.
These lines contain the first and only use of the first-person in
"Preludes." It is highly unusual to delay the introduction of a LINES 52-54
poem's speaker until the very end of a poem, but this serves to Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
isolate the speaker from the reader. It also positions the last The worlds revolve like ancient women
seven lines of "Preludes" as a kind of epilogue to the rest of the Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
poem. The revelation that the preceding poem is the result of The poem ends with a command to another anonymous "you,"
the speaker being "moved by fancies" ("fancies" meaning telling this person: "Wipe your hand across your mouth, and
fantasies, or daydreams) prompted by "these images" of the

laugh." A laugh or smile can mean many things (think of the By poem IV, the personification of the city has developed from
Mona Lisa!), so just what this laugh suggests is very ambiguous. simply being conscious to having a "conscience"—in other
It could be a cynical response to the ideas of eternity presented words, a moral code. This is like an animal transitioning into a
in the previous lines, or an ironic dismissal of city life by a higher human: although apes have consciousness, there is little
being (i.e., by God). evidence they are developed enough to have a moral system.
When paired with the last two lines of the poem, which Not only does the street now have a conscience, it is also
compare the vast movement of entire "worlds" to those of "Impatient to assume the world." This evokes the idea of God
"ancient women / Gathering fuel," it may be likelier that this line assuming the world in the form of Christ, and Christ then
is a dismissal of both eternity and of daily life. Since the poem assuming the cross to redeem humankind. This staggering idea
concludes by comparing these two timelines, which were earlier implies that the environment is not merely more conscious and
only contrasted, perhaps its conclusion is that deeper ideas of more moral than its utterly dehumanized inhabitants, but that
time (represented here by worlds revolving and the reference it is also like Christ in being potentially able to redeem human
to ancient history) actually resemble the repetitive motions of beings.
daily routine—rather than offering (as Christians would have
it), a redemption or an escape from that monotony. Where P
Personification
ersonification appears in the poem:
This is emphasized by the adjective "ancient," which in addition • Line 1: “The winter evening settles down”
to meaning very old, also specifically recalls ancient • Line 14: “The morning comes to consciousness”
civilizations. On the surface, members of such civilizations had • Line 34: “As the street hardly understands;”
very different lives from those of modern city-dwellers; but • Lines 46-47: “The conscience of a blackened street /
whereas Greek or Roman women may have gathered grain, and Impatient to assume the world.”
modern women "fuel," their repetitive lives nonetheless
resemble one another's at a deeper level. Both go out every day SYNECDOCHE
to carry out, without much thought, the tasks they carried out Whereas personification is used to describe the environment in
the day before. the poem, synecdoche is used to describe its human
In other words, maybe this is the poem's way of saying that the inhabitants. In poem II "muddy feet ... press / To early coffee-
robotic, meaningless, endless drudgery of city life is not stands" as if separated from the people who own them and
anything new; human beings are simply doomed to such an acting with a will of their own. The same effect is produced by
existence. Quite a dismal way to end a poem! the "hands / That are raising dingy shades," where once more,
there is no mention of the people who own these hands. It is
also important to note that hands and feet are the two most
POETIC DEVICES essential appendages for carrying out everyday tasks; every
able-bodied person has both, meaning they are not
PERSONIFICATION distinguishing features. This emphasizes the general,
Personification plays a vital role in "Preludes," appearing at anonymous nature of both these activities, as well as the lack of
crucial points in each poem. The first lines of both poems I and individual free will involved.
II conceive of times of day being conscious: "The winter evening The next instance of synecdoche likewise focuses on feet,
settles down" as if it's somebody relaxing after a hard day at which are now "insistent." Despite the different adjective, their
work, and the "morning comes to consciousness," like behavior is very similar to those earlier feet: they also rush
somebody waking up. The fact that it is the environment that is thoughtlessly ahead. However, now the full effect of this
described as conscious stands in contrast to the description of thoughtless forward-motion is revealed: it tramples the Christ-
people in the poem, who are depicted as robot-like mindless like "soul" that stretches across the sky (see our entry on
followers of routine (or, in poem III, as hallucinating, possibly personification for more detail on this).
mad, loners). It is as if the intelligence and independence
In line 43, the "short square fingers stuffing pipes" evoke the
normally associated with humans has been drained from them
earlier mention of "hands," since, of course, fingers are part of
and taken up by the world around them instead.
hands. The "pipes" also echo the "burnt out ends of smoky
This disconnect between the environment and its inhabitants is days" from line 4, associating the personal activity of smoking
emphasized on line 34, where the "vision of the street" with the grimy smells and mood of the city as a whole.
experienced by the half-awake woman in her bedroom is one
The last instance of synecdoche, the "eyes / Assured of certain
that the street itself "hardly understands." This implies that her
certainties" in lines 44-45, basically sums up the meaning of the
visions do not align with the reality of the street itself, and
previous four. These urban citizens seem to glance at each
rather than being illuminating or revelatory, are in fact
other and wink in self-assurance; it is this self-assurance that
delusions brought on by her isolation.

allows them to continue behaving so repetitively and passively,
to the extent that their body parts seem to have more control • Line 2: “s,” “s”
over them than do their own minds. • Line 3: “S”
• Line 4: “s”
Where Synecdoche appears in the poem: • Line 9: “b”
• Line 10: “b,” “b”
• Lines 17-18: “With all its muddy feet that press / To • Line 11: “c,” “st”
early coffee-stands.” • Line 12: “c,” “st,” “st”
• Lines 21-22: “One thinks of all the hands / That are • Line 13: “th,” “th,” “l,” “th,” “l”
raising dingy shades” • Line 14: “c,” “c”
• Line 41: “Or trampled by insistent feet” • Line 15: “s,” “s”
• Line 43: “And short square fingers stuffing pipes,” • Line 16: “s,” “s,” “t”
• Lines 44-45: “and eyes / Assured of certain certainties,” • Line 18: “st”
• Line 24: “b,” “b”
ALLITERATION • Line 25: “b”
Alliter
Alliteration
ation is one of the main sound effects in "Preludes." The • Line 26: “w”
repetition of the same or similar sounds at the start of nearby • Line 28: “wh,” “w,” “c”
words is used primarily to evoke the repetitiveness of city life, • Line 30: “wh,” “w,” “c,” “b”
which the poem characterizes as based on dull routine. This is • Line 31: “c,” “b”
certainly the case with the examples on lines 13 ("llighting of the • Line 32: “s”
lamps"), 14 ("ccomes to consciousness"), and 42 ("ffour and five"), • Line 33: “s,” “s”
all of which describe actions that occur every day on a mass • Line 34: “s”
scale: street lamps are lit each evening, morning is a daily • Line 35: “S”
• Line 36: “c”
occurrence, and "four and five" pm are necessarily struck every
• Line 37: “c,” “s”
afternoon.
• Line 38: “s”
In lines 9 and 10, alliteration echoes the lines' content: • Line 39: “s,” “s,” “s”
• Line 40: “c”
The showers beat • Line 41: “f”
On broken blinds ... • Line 42: “f,” “f,” “s”
• Line 43: “s,” “f,” “s”
The alliteration here feels almost like onomatopoeia because • Line 45: “c,” “c”
the hard /b/ sound evokes the noise produced by raindrops • Line 46: “s”
hitting blinds and "chimney-pots." Line 24 and 25's alliteration • Line 48: “c”
is also based on the /b/ sound ("b blanket from the bed, / You lay • Line 49: “c”
upon your back ...."), and possibly recalls this loud noise of • Line 50: “s”
rainfall, as it describes the actions of a woman who is in bed • Line 51: “s”
unable to sleep. Loud noises from outside may well be part of • Line 52: “W”
what is keeping her awake. • Line 53: “w,” “w”
"W
When all the world came back" is a softer instance of
alliteration than the previous example. As it describes a SIBILANCE
character waking from sleep and experiencing the sights and The soft /s/ sound is by far the most abundant sound in
sounds of the world slowly returning, this is appropriate. She is "Preludes." There are also many /z/ and /sh/ sounds, overall
not quite entirely awake and thus under the influence of hard making for a very sibilant poem. For the most part this sibilance
reality, but is still half-asleep, in a gentle in between state is used for onomatopoeic effect: "ssmell of steakss" evokes the
embodied by the melodious /w/ sound. sizzling sound of steaks frying; "endss of smoky dayss" and "sh
short
Much of the alliteration and consonance in the poem revolves square fingerss stuffing pipess," evoke the exhaling of smoke;
around the /s/ sound, which we discuss in our next entry on "gussty sh
shower," the soft patter of rain; etc.
sibilance
sibilance. However, sibilance also has other purposes in the poem. This is
especially clear in Poem III, which is about an isolated woman
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem: seeing "vision[s]" and hallucinatory "sordid images" in her
bedroom. Both of these are experienced when she is dipping in
• Line 1: “s”
and out of sleep. As with smoking, when people sleep they

audibly inhale and exhale, which produces an /s/ sound.
Moreover, the softness of this sound associates it with sleep for • Line 46: “s,” “c,” “s”
another reason: because it is restful, and the /s/ sound is • Line 47: “ti,” “ss”
likewise relaxing. Thus sibilance in "Preludes" creates an
atmosphere of sleepiness throughout the poem. Take a look at ALLUSION
some of the specific sibilance in poem III: "Preludes" is full of allusions to other works, above all to Eliot's
own poems. These internal consistencies help to create an
The thoussand sordid imagess overarching "Eliotic" vision of the world. The first example,
Of which your soul wass consstituted; "burnt-out ends" recalls two other poems from Prufrock and
... Other Observations (1917), the collection in which "Preludes"
You had such a vission of the street was published. "The LLo ove Song of JJ.. Alfred Prufrock
Prufrock" has "butt-
As the street hardly undersstandss; ends of my days," while "Burbank with a Baedecker: Bleistein
... with a Cigar" has "the smoky candle-end of time." All three
Or classped the yellow soless of feet metaphors compare time to a candle or cigarette nearing its
In the palmss of both soiled handss. end, and together illustrate a way of thinking about time that
pervades Eliot's work: as an exhausted, inglorious process
The /s/ sound then carries right on over to poem IV with: coming to its grimy end in modernity.
The most extensive allusion however, is poem III. It is a
His soul stretched tight across
ss the skiess
reimagining of a scene from Charles Louis-Philippe's novel
Bubu de Montparnasse, in which a prostitute called Berthe
In both instances, sibilance associates these things with the
wakes up after a night with a lover. The original is full of seedy
dreamlike "sordid images" mentioned in line 27. This strange,
description, describing sweat staining the bed-sheets, "où les
and sleepy atmosphere is meant to leave the reader unsure
corps sont sales et les âmes aussi" ("where bodies are dirty and
whether the scenes being described are real or fantastic.
souls as well"), echoed by the sibilant "sordid," "soul," and
"soiled" in Eliot's poem. "Preludes" picks up on two physical
Where Sibilance appears in the poem: details in particular: "ses pieds malpropres, mince et jaune"
• Line 1: “s,” “s” ("her filthy feet, she was thin and yellow"), contracting them in
• Line 2: “s,” “s,” “s,” “ss,” “s” line 37's "yellow feet." Yellow is a color associated with disease
• Line 3: “S,” “x” (e.g., jaundice and yellow fever) and the woman's isolation and
• Line 4: “s,” “s,” “s” ennui seem almost to be an infection affecting the city's
• Line 5: “s,” “s” population as a whole.
• Line 6: “s,” “s” There is another allusion, though it is rather academic and not
• Line 11: “s” all that necessary to understanding the gist of this poem.
• Line 12: “s,” “s,” “s,” “s,” “s” "Vacant lots," which appears in lines 8 and 54, is probably a
• Line 14: “s,” “s,” “s,” “ss” translation of a phrase used a couple times by French poet
• Line 15: “s,” “s,” “s” Jules Laforgue: "terrains vagues." Eliot re-used the phrase in his
• Line 16: “s,” “s,” “s”
poem "Second Caprice in North Cambridge." Part of Eliot's aim
• Line 17: “s,” “ss”
in his early writing was to transport ideas from French
• Line 18: “s,” “s”
Symbolism into English poetry, especially French Symbolism's
• Line 27: “s,” “s,” “s”
focus on modern urban life and its combining this focus with
• Line 28: “s,” “s,” “s”
hallucinogenic imagery. "Vacant lots" refers to undeveloped
• Line 33: “s,” “s,” “s”
real estate, and its usage here is part of this aim.
• Line 34: “s,” “s,” “s”
• Line 35: “S”
• Line 37: “s,” “s,” “s” Where Allusion appears in the poem:
• Line 38: “s,” “s,” “s” • Line 4: “burnt-out ends of smoky days.”
• Line 39: “s,” “s,” “s,” “ss,” “s,” “s” • Line 8: “vacant lots;”
• Line 40: “c” • Lines 24-38: “You tossed a blanket from the bed, / You
• Line 41: “s,” “s” lay upon your back, and waited; / You dozed, and
• Line 42: “s,” “x” watched the night revealing / The thousand sordid
• Line 43: “sh,” “s,” “s,” “s,” “s” images / Of which your soul was constituted; / They
• Line 45: “ss,” “c,” “c,” “s” flickered against the ceiling. / And when all the world

came back / And the light crept up between the shutters • Line 44: “And”
/ And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, / You had
such a vision of the street / As the street hardly METAPHOR
understands; / Sitting along the bed’s edge, where / You
curled the papers from your hair, / Or clasped the yellow The first use of metaphor in "Preludes" is in line 4, which
soles of feet / In the palms of both soiled hands.” compares the "winter evening" to the "burnt-out ends" of
• Line 54: “vacant lots” cigarettes. As noted in this guide's discussion of the poem's use
of allusion
allusion, this is a recurring image in Eliot's first published
collection of poetry. Smoking cigarettes was considered lowly, a
ANAPHORA
working class habit at the time "Preludes" as written. Eliot thus
Anaphor
Anaphoraa occurs at three points in "Preludes." The first links a winter evening in the city to the habits and lifestyles of
instance is at the start of poem III, when the poem's perspective the less well off. He refuses to romanticize the time of day; it is
focuses for the first time on an individual character. This shift is grimy, smelly, and "smoky" (evoking both cigarettes and the
especially jarring because in poems I and II, any mention of steaks cooking in line 2).
human beings is highly generalized, focusing only on their
The second use of metaphor refers to the movements of time,
"hands" and "feet" rather than on any distinguishing features.
described as "masquerades" in line 19. A masquerade is a
Line 24 totally reverses this. The repeated use of the second disguise or mask. As such, the metaphor is basically saying that
person pronoun, "You," transforms the reader from a passive clock-time—the designated hours of the day that dictate urban
spectator—kept at arm's length from the narrative of the first life—is an illusion. "Masquerades" also originally referred to
two poems—into a participant in this third poem. By repeating formal balls in which guests wore masks and took part in
"You" at the start of three consecutive lines, Eliot emphasizes dances, whose steps were learned by heart. The repetition
the intimacy and privacy of the scene being described: had he necessary to do this is similar to the repetitive routines of
used third-person, it would be as if the speaker and reader modern life described in the “Preludes.”
were voyeurs, watching the woman without her knowledge, but
The poem's final metaphor is the most complex. It evokes a vast
the second-person erases this idea, placing the reader directly
"soul stretched tight across the skies," and which is also
into the scene.
"trampled by insistent feet." We discuss this image more in this
The next instance of anaphora appears in lines 30-32, which guide's entry on personification
personification, but it is worth noting again
describe the woman waking up to the sights ("light" creeping up here how it bears certain similarities to Christ: he was
"between the shutters") and sounds ("sparrows in the gutters") stretched on the cross and his ridiculing by the people of
of the world. The repetition of the word "And" at the start of Jerusalem before the crucifixion is evoked by the degrading
each line (also technically an example of the device description of a soul being "trampled." However, the vagueness
polysyndeton
polysyndeton) recalls lines 11 and 13 ("And at the corner ... And of this metaphor makes it impossible to definitively identify
then the lighting ..."), which likewise focused on events that what it refers to. Whether it is Christian or not, the general
happen each and every day; in the earlier example this is the notion of the soul being trampled certainly fits with the
lighting of street lamps, in the later instance, it is morning birds dehumanizing depiction of urban life that the poem puts forth.
singing and the sun coming up.
This is very similar to the final use of anaphora, which describes Where Metaphor appears in the poem:
people lighting pipes and reading evening newspapers, both
• Line 4: “The burnt-out ends of smoky days.”
actions associated repeated on a mass scale every evening.
• Lines 19-20: “With the other masquerades / That time
Thus anaphora, both in lines 30-32 and 43-44 ("And short
resumes,”
square fingers ... And evening newspapers ..."), serves to evoke
• Line 29: “They flickered against the ceiling.”
the daily repetitions of life in a modern city.
• Lines 39-41: “His soul stretched tight across the skies /
That fade behind a city block, / Or trampled by insistent
Where Anaphor
Anaphoraa appears in the poem: feet”
• Line 24: “You”
• Line 25: “You” SIMILE
• Line 26: “You” There is only one simile in "Preludes," but it comes at an
• Line 30: “And” important point: at the very end of the poem. Its comparison of
• Line 31: “And” "worlds" revolving to "ancient women / Gathering fuel" is a
• Line 32: “And” comparison between the cosmic realm (that is, those revolving
• Line 43: “And” worlds) and the earthly realm (the women gathering fuel). This

is surprising because throughout the poem, it seems as if a is a very musical sounding first section. Eliot clearly knows how
contrast between these two scales of existence is what's to make his poetry sound nice, even when he's describing
important. The sheer banality of repetitive daily routines and something he is not too fond of (i.e., modern urban life).
their dehumanizing effects on city-dwellers contrasts with the Of course, some moments of assonance do more than make the
religious ideas of eternity and redemption hinted at throughout poem sound interesting. For example, in line 7 the long /ee/
the poem (see line by line commentary for a detailed sound "leaeaves" and "fee
eet" evokes the high, howling sound of
explanation). that "gusty" wind as it wraps those leaves "about your feet."
However, this final simile undermines any idea of redemption Later, note the long /oh/ sound that connects the end of poem
as an end to endless, draining repetition. It implies that, rather III to the start of poem IV:
than being organized according to a deep, Christian timeline (of
the Fall, Redemption, and the Last Judgement, one in which Or clasped the yello
ow sooles of feet
certain changes are destined to occur), the cosmic scale at In the palms of bo
oth soiled hands.
which "worlds revolve" in fact resembles earthly, clock-based IV
time (that is, the same clock-time that structures and controls His sou
oul stretched tight across the skies
city-dwellers' lives). Both timescales are monotonous and
repetitive, both "revolve" like the hands of a clock, which return Assonance links the "soul" to the dirty feet and hands of the
to the same positions every day. The choice of "women / previous section—subtly suggesting how this "soul" (with its
Gathering fuel" as a comparison to the revolutions of planets is connotations of Christian salvation) has been trampled and
particularly apt, as this is an image of a very lowly routine. soiled by city-dwellers.
The adjective "ancient" of course means these are old women, "Tight" and "skies" in line 39, meanwhile, both use the long /i/
but it also places them in a classical tradition, since the word sound, mimicking the length of a material "stretched" across a
"ancient" describes the civilizations of Greece, Rome, and space as vast as the "sky." This sound contrasts with the
Egypt. Thus there is also a comparison between the modern assonance of the short /i/ in lines 49 to 51:
routine of gathering fuel and the ancient routines of gathering
in the harvest or going to the market. This implies that human ... images, and cliing:
behavior actually has not changed very much over the The notion of some infiiniitely gentle
centuries, that the modern city's dull routines in fact resemble Infiiniitely sufferiing thiing.
those of earlier societies, which in turn resemble the movement
of whole "worlds." The short /i/ assonance here links this "infinitely suffering
thing" to the vague "images" that the speaker imagines, and to
Where Simile appears in the poem: which the speaker's "fancies ... cling."
• Lines 53-54: “The worlds revolve like ancient women / Finally, the triple assonance in "Assu
ured of ceertain ceertainties"
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.” in line 45 ironically parrots the way such certainties come
about: by being repeated as gossip or cliches, until they are
ASSONANCE universally accepted as truth. This mocks the received wisdom
of the cynical modern person, smoking their pipe and reading
Lacking a consistent rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme, "Preludes" uses assonance
their newspaper, who thinks they know all there is to know
to create a sense of melody and rhythm throughout. This is
about how the world works.
clear from the first two lines, which—through a combination of
assonant /eh/ and /ay/ sounds and consonance of the /w/ and
/s/ sounds—feel poetic and lyrical, even as these lines describe Where Assonance appears in the poem:
something pretty mundane (that is, the odors from cooking • Line 1: “e”
meat seeping into alleyways): • Line 2: “e,” “ea,” “a”
• Line 4: “ou,” “a”
The winter evening se settless dow
wn • Line 5: “o,” “o,” “a”
With smeell of stea
eakss in pass
ssagewa
wayss. • Line 6: “a”
• Line 7: “ea,” “ou,” “ee”
This long /ay/ sound echoes throughout the rest of this stanza • Line 8: “a,” “a,” “o”
in fact ("daays," "newspaapers," "vaacant," etc.). It is further • Line 9: “o,” “ea”
supplemented by assonance on the /ah/ ("scraaps," "wraaps"), • Line 10: “O,” “o”
/ow/ ("ouout," "no
ow," "sho
ower," "abou
out"), /ee/ ("lea
eaves," "feeeet," • Line 11: “ee”
"bea
eat," "stree
reet"), and /aw/ sounds ("loots," "o
on," "po ots"). The result • Line 12: “a,” “a”

The enjambment echoes the lines' content here. It is as if the
• Line 13: “A,” “a” speaker's phrases themselves are being wrapped across the line
• Line 15: “ai,” “a,” “ee” breaks, much like the leaves and newspapers are wrapped
• Line 16: “a,” “ee” around the city-dwellers' feet.
• Line 17: “ee”
A similar thing happens in poem II, which describes people
• Line 18: “y,” “ee,” “a”
getting up and going about their morning routines. Nearly
• Line 19: “a”
every line here is enjambed, and the speaker's phrases
• Line 22: “ai,” “a”
routinely "trample" across the line breaks—just as these
• Line 24: “o,” “a”
people's feet "trample" across streets in the rush to get their
• Line 25: “a,” “o,” “ai”
morning coffee:
• Line 26: “a”
• Line 27: “i,” “i”
From the sawdust-trampled street
• Line 28: “i”
• Line 29: “i,” “i” With all its muddy feet that press
• Line 31: “u,” “u” To early coffee-stands.
• Line 32: “u”
• Line 33: “u,” “ee” The enjambment between lines 48 and 49 again does
• Line 34: “ee” something similar, with one line "curling around" the next:
• Line 35: “e,” “e,” “e”
• Line 36: “ai” I am moved by fancies that are curled
• Line 37: “o,” “o” Around these images, and cling:
• Line 38: “o”
• Line 39: “ou,” “i,” “i” Overall, the enjambment throughout the poem evokes the
• Line 40: “i,” “o” meandering nature of the speaker's thoughts. The poem's lines
• Line 41: “y,” “i,” “i” are (very roughly) the same length, meaning phrases are
• Line 42: “i,” “i,” “o” repeatedly cut off in the middle and must continue onto the
• Line 43: “i,” “i,” “i” next line. This creates the sense that the speaker is thinking off
• Line 44: “eye” the cuff, and that while city-dwellers are slaves to daily routine
• Line 45: “u,” “e,” “e” and clock-time, the speaker's thoughts themselves cannot be
• Line 47: “o,” “u,” “o” contained by any specific poetic form.
• Line 48: “o,” “u”
• Line 49: “i,” “i” Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
• Line 50: “o,” “o,” “i,” “i,” “i”
• Line 51: “I,” “i,” “i,” “u,” “i,” “i” • Lines 1-2: “down / With”
• Line 53: “a” • Lines 5-6: “wraps / The”
• Line 54: “a” • Lines 7-8: “feet / And”
• Lines 9-10: “beat / On”
• Lines 11-12: “street / A”
ENJAMBMENT
• Lines 14-15: “consciousness / Of”
Enjambment appears throughout "Preludes." The poem does • Lines 15-16: “beer / From”
not follow any specific form, and its use of enjambment is free • Lines 16-17: “street / With”
and loose—making the poem feel unpredictable as it follows the • Lines 17-18: “press / To”
speaker's thoughts. • Lines 19-20: “masquerades / That”
Most of the time enjambment is used when the speaker • Lines 21-22: “hands / That”
describes the daily routines of city life. For instance, in poem I, • Lines 22-23: “shades / In”
look at the enjambment in lines 5-7 , which deal with the • Lines 26-27: “revealing / The”
common sight on a winter evening of newspapers and leaves • Lines 27-28: “images / Of”
being blown among the feet of passers-by: • Lines 30-31: “back / And”
• Lines 31-32: “shutters / And”
And now a gusty shower wr
wraps
aps • Lines 33-34: “street / As”
The grimy scraps • Lines 35-36: “where / You”
Of withered leaves about your feet • Lines 37-38: “feet / In”
And newspapers ... • Lines 39-40: “skies / That”
• Lines 41-42: “feet / At”

this phrase, and, as such, to the speaker's sense of resignation.
• Lines 44-45: “eyes / Assured”
• Lines 46-47: “street / Impatient” Where Caesur
Caesuraa appears in the poem:
• Lines 48-49: “curled / Around”
• Lines 50-51: “gentle / Infinitely” • Line 25: “back, and”
• Lines 53-54: “women / Gathering” • Line 26: “dozed, and”
• Line 35: “edge, where”
• Line 44: “newspapers, and”
CAESURA
• Line 49: “images, and”
All but one of the caesur
caesuras
as in "Preludes" are followed by "and," • Line 52: “mouth, and”
which introduces another detail to whatever is being described.
In lines 25 and 26, for example, the combination of caesuras
with "and" gives the lines a staccato rhythm that mimics the
character's unstable sleep, from which she constantly wakes.
VOCABULARY
The four verbs "lay ... waited ... dozed ... watched" also serve to Burnt-out ends (Line 4) - This refers to the stubs of cigarettes.
stress how restless is her supposed rest: Smoking cigarettes was looked down on as a working class
habit at the time "Preludes" was written, with pipes and cigars
You lay upon your back, and waited; the preferred alternative of the middle and upper classes. In
You dozed, and watched the night revealing comparing the "winter evening" to the dirty, smoky, useless
remains of a finished cigarette, this metaphor serves to
Line 44's caesura acts as a pause before the introduction of a emphasize the poem's conception of city life as sordid and
statement summarizing what people living in cities are like: grubby.
Vacant lots (Line 8, Line 54) - This refers to undeveloped plots
And evening newspapers, and eyes
of land or real estate. Much of the time, these are empty
portions of mud and grass set between buildings, thus
One can see in their "eyes" that these people feel "Assured of
emphasizing the poem's vision of a seemingly empty city.
certain certainties"—in other words, that they feel secure and
complacent in their way of life. The pause created by the Consciousness (Line 14) - This essentially means "awareness,"
caesura helps set this phrase apart from the rest of the line and as in the personified morning becomes aware of these "faint
adds a sense of weight to it. These people are not likely to be stale smells."
shaken from these "certainties" any time soon. Masquerades (Line 19) - A "masquerade" means a disguise or
Line 49's caesura, on the other hand, isolates the phrase "and mask. It originally referred to a formal ball in which guests wore
cling," in order to mimic the act of clinging itself; to cling means masks and took part in dances, whose steps were learned by
to barely hold on, so putting it at the end of the line like that is heart. The repetition necessary to do this is similar to the
like someone gripping the edge of a cliff: repetitive routines of modern life described in the poem.
Shades (Line 22) - Can refer to blinds behind a window or to
Around these images, and cling: lampshades, both of which are designed to control the amount
of light in a room. A "shade" can also mean a ghost, and this
The one instance of a caesura that isn't followed by "and" is in meaning implies that the "shades" being raised are people
line 35, where, as with line 49, the pause created by the caesura themselves, who are so dehumanized by city life as to be like
helps to mimic the idea of being on the edge of something (this ghosts rather than flesh and blood human beings.
time "the bed's," but also on the edge of sleep):
Sordid (Line 27) - "Sordid" means both dirty/unclean and
immoral/distasteful. It thus relates both to the unclean state of
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where living demonstrated by the untidy bedroom, and the immorality
of prostitution (keeping in mind that in Bubu de Montparnasse,
The final caesura is followed by "and laugh," and again helps to the text being alluded to in poem III, the woman Berthe is a
emphasize this phrase, to set it apart from the rest of the line: prostitute).
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; Vision (Line 33) - A "vision" in this sense refers to a mystical or
religious experience—something seen otherwise than by
In this moment, the speaker seems to be looking at the dismal ordinary sight.
state of the human condition and saying that there is nothing to Soiled (Line 38) - "Soiled" means dirty, although as with
be done about it except to laugh. The caesura adds weight to "sordid," it is often used to describe morally unclean actions as

well as literally unclean things. in which city-dwellers are alienated by urban life.
Insistent (Line 41) - "Insistent" is an adjective that describes Poem I can be split into three sections, the first, from line 1 to 4,
demanding or unrelenting behavior. The "feet" here, then, will the next from line 5 to 12, and the last is line 13. The first,
not be swayed from their determination to get to where they consisting of lines 1 to 4, gives the reader an overview of the
need to be going. scene: it takes place on a winter evening, at six o'clock, a scene
Assured (Line 45) - "Assured" means extremely confident. Here that can be summed up as the "burnt-out end" of the day. The
it is being used critically and evoking the phrase "self-assured," next chunk, lines 5 to 12, goes into more detail about the goings
which can be a compliment but can also describe someone who on in this particular city, at this particular time, focusing
is arrogant. especially on what can be seen and heard. Line 13 then signifies
a transition from evening to night, hence its separation from
Conscience (Line 46) - As opposed to "consciousness" (in line the main body of the stanza.
14) "conscience" is overwhelmingly associated only with human
beings. It refers to a moral sense of what is right and wrong, Poem II can be thought of as splitting equally into two sections
and the ability to make judgments according to these notions. of five lines each. The first five lines focus on realistic
description of city life. However, with the introduction of
Assume (Line 47) - "Assume" has two meanings here. The first "masquerades" in line 19, the poem takes a turn, from which it
is to take unto oneself; to receive, accept, or adopt. This usage will explore what lies beneath the deceptive "masquerades"
is particularly common in the religious sense of receiving that have been its main subject up to this point.
someone up to heaven (and thus emphasizes the subtle
Christian imagery in poem IV). The second meaning is to take Poem III can be split into two sections. The first, from line 24 to
something as being one's own (i.e., to take responsibility for). 29, takes place at nighttime, with the female character trying to
This meaning contradicts the first, implying not religious sleep but being distracted by waking hallucinations. The
redemption, but conquest or domination of humankind by the second, from line 31 to 38 takes place as the sun rises,
environment. signifying morning.
Fancies (Line 48) - "Fancies" refer to imagined things, Poem IV is the most structured of the bunch, given that it is
especially ideas that are unrealistic or fantastic. It is an old- broken up on the page into three separate stanzas. The first
fashioned word, which encourages the reader to interpret the returns to the city, alluding to Christian theology for the first
speaker's ideas ironically, as perhaps they are merely time with the references to a "soul stretched tight across the
sentimental. skies." The second allows the speaker for the first and only time
to speak in the first-person, meaning lines 48 to 51 are at a
Infinitely (Line 50, Line 51) - "Infinitely" refers to something further distance from the narrative than any other section of
that goes on forever in time and/or space, and which is thus the poem. The final three lines of the poem return to the
outside the limits of human life. Gods in different religions are grubby sights of urban life.
considered infinite, because they transcend human ideas of
time and space. METER
For the most part, the meter of "Preludes" is iambic tetr
tetrameter
ameter.
An iamb is a poetic foot with a da DUM rhythm, and tetrameter
FORM, METER, & RHYME means that there are four of these feet per line. Take lines 1 and
2:
FORM
The clearest formal element of "Preludes" is the fact that it is The win
win- | ter eve- | ning set
set- | tles down
organized into four separate poems (labeled I, II, III, and IV). With smell | of steaks | in pas
pas- | sagewa
ways
ys.
These different poems within the larger poem create a series of
vignettes, or short scenes, of modern urban life. Together, they Overall, this steady rhythm echoes the robotic, repetitive
all paint a picture of a dreary, isolating existence everywhere behavior of city-dwellers in the poem. However there are
the speaker looks. numerous lines which break with this pattern, the most
But the shorter poems within "Preludes" are all structured very important of which are discussed here.
differently, making the poem feel unpredictable and disjointed In poem 1, lines 3, 6, and 9 are all clearly shorter than the
even as all these sections essentially build towards the same surrounding lines:
idea of urban life as being miserable and lonely. Poem I has 13
lines split into two stanzas; poem II has one stanza with 10 Six | o'clock
clock
lines; Poem III has one stanza of 15 lines; and poem IV has The gri
gri- | my scr
scraps
aps
three stanzas of 9, 4, and 3 lines apiece. The differences in
The show
show- | ers beat
structure isolate the poems from each other, echoing the way

Technically these are written in dimeter, meaning they have two This is basically an inversion of the poem's regular meter (DUM
DUM
feet per line (line 3 is technically something called headless da instead of da DUM
DUM), as if the speaker is pulling off the
catalectic, because it is missing its initial unstressed beat). More curtain to reveal that what is behind it is the opposite to what
important than terminology, though, is the effect of such readers thought it was. That is, all these images might just be
changes in meter. These create a rhythm of sudden shifts and projections of the speaker's mind, the speakers imagined
starts, which throws the reader off balance, preventing them "fancies."
from feeling comfortable.
RHYME SCHEME
There are short lines in poem II as well, each of which
represents a form of arrival. Line 18 signifies the arrival of "Preludes" doesn't have a strict rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme, though its
"muddy feet" to the "coffee-stands" where they were frequent use of assonance creates a lyrical, melodious sound
determinedly headed, and is written in trimeter (three feet per throughout. That said, the poem does contain end-rh
end-rhymes
ymes here
line): and there. Poem I, for example, rhymes as follows:
ABCBDDEFEFEGG
To ear
ear- | ly cof
cof- | fee-stands
stands. Though there are clearly rhymes happening, there is no obvious
pattern to them. The poem is unpredictable, keeping readers in
And line 20, which describes the resumption of artificial clock- their toes.
time each morning, is again in dimeter:
The most frequently recurring rhyme is with the word "feet,"
which appears in each of the four poems. Sometimes this
That time | resumes
sumes,
creates end rh
rhyme
yme, as with "feet," "beat," and "street" in poem I.
Other times, it creates internal rh
rhymes
ymes or assonance, as with
There are also several hypercatalectic lines throughout the
lines 16 and 17: "From the sawdust-trampled street / With all
poem (all this means is that a line has one syllable too many, as its muddy feet that press ..." Being associated with the dirtiness
opposed to catalectic, which again means they are missing a of the pavement, feet act as shorthand for the dirtiness of the
syllable). Interestingly these first occur in poem III, with the city as a whole. The fact that the word's most common rhyme is
shift in focus from the general mass of anonymous city- with "street" highlights this relationship.
dwellers to an individual character (the woman on her bed).
Lines 25, 26, and 28 are all hypercatalectic: It is also worth noting that poem I contains the most instances
of end-rhyme. Perhaps this is in order to establish an ordered
rhythm that mimics the artificial order imposed by clock-time
You la
layy | upon
on | your back | and wait
waited;
on human behavior. As "Preludes" progresses, this order is
You dozed
dozed, | and watched | the night | revveaealing
revealed to be a "masquerade"—and, fittingly, the use of rhyme
...
becomes more irregular.
Of which | your soul | was con
con- | stitu
tuted;
There are occasional half-rh
half-rhymes
ymes as well, such as
These extra unstressed syllables (i.e, the "ed" in "waited") "eyes"/"certainties" (lines 44-45). This use of half-rhyme here is
specifically create something called feminine endings
endings. They ironic in lines focused on the idea of certainty, given that, if
evoke the lazy, stress-free state of the woman in this anything, half-rhyme reveals uncertainty. Thus the speaker
scene—still groggy, halfway between sleep and waking. encourages readers to be critical of the received opinions
passed around in cities.
Several lines also mix in feet other than the iamb to vary the
rhythm, or depart entirely from using the iamb as their metrical
basis. The most important of these departures take place in the
section including lines 48 to 51. This section has a distinct
SPEAKER
status from the rest of the poem, as it is the only place where The speaker of "Preludes" is a distant, ambiguous figure—never
the speaker speaks in the first-person. given a name, age, gender, or profession. For most of the poem,
Line 48, for instance, is trochaic pentameter
pentameter. Recall that a the speaker does not appear at all—making these descriptions
trochee has a stressed
stressed-unstressed rhythm, essentially making it of city life seem more like objective reality rather than the
the opposite of the iamb, while pentameter means there are five observations of a specific person.
of these trochees in the line (as opposed to the four in That changes in line 48, where the first person pronoun "I"
tetrameter). This line is again catalectic, because it is missing its appears: "I am moved by fancies that are curled ..." This makes it
final unstressed syllable that should appear after "curled"; more clear that the prior lines are coming from a single person's
important, though, is again the fact that these are trochees: perspective—though, again, readers learn next to nothing
about this person. All readers know is that the speaker seems
I am | mo
movved by | fan
fancies | that are | curled to be a detached observer of city life, cataloguing many small

but telling details. These details, in turn, prompt the speaker to take on modern urban life seen in "Preludes" is clearly echoed
think of "some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing." In by Eiot's famous poem "The
The LLo
ove Song of JJ.. Alfred Prufrock
Prufrock."
other words, thinking about the drudgery and isolation of Eliot's models at this time were mainly French Symbolist poets
modern life causes the speaker to feel a vague sense of sadness of the late 19th century, such as Jules Laforgue and Stéphane
and unease. Mallarmé. Symbolism was a movement that rejected Realism in
art; instead it tried to symbolize psychological states through
descriptions of the world itself. A way to understand this is to
SETTING think of the Symbolist painting The ScrScream
eam by Edv
Edvar
ardd Munch
Munch.
The setting for "Preludes" is an anonymous modern city at The landscape and figures are distorted, appearing nothing like
various times of day. The city setting is grimy, filled with litter they do in real life. This distortion instead represents the
and smokey smells, and host to a population going screamer's internal agony.
thoughtlessly about its daily routine. The reader gets glimpses Eliot's descriptions of grubby city life in "Preludes," combined
of "dingy shades" and "muddy feet," as well as a look into the with dreamlike, fantastic visions, was inspired by these French
room of an unnamed woman who is sitting on her unmade bed poets. As Eliot himself said, "The kind of poetry that I needed to
and staring at the ceiling. Overall, the atmosphere is filled with teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all;
a sense of isolation and decay. This city is not a lively, bustling it was only to be found in French."
place—but rather one filled with dirt, grime, and loneliness.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
In early drafts poem I was titled "Prelude in Dorchester
(Houses)" and later tweaked to "Prelude in Roxbury (Houses)"; Understanding modernism also relies on understanding the
and poems II and III were each "Prelude in Roxbury." historical period in which it took place. The early 20th century
Dorchester and Roxbury are neighborhoods in south Boston. was a time of immense change. New technologies such as the
Eliot's decision to remove these specific details from the titles airplane and telephone had changed people's lives immensely
helps to create an atmosphere of timeless universality; these in a short space of time. Urbanization was increasing, as more
poems could take place in any city, anywhere. Although some and more people began moving from the countryside to the city
references (e.g., "the lighting of the lamps" and people smoking in developed countries around the world.
pipes) are dated nowadays, Eliot's depiction of city-life still Most importantly, World War I had shattered the old European
seems remarkably contemporary. Anyone who lives in a large order. Although it was still going on by the time the final version
city today will surely recognize these tropes—of people of "Preludes" was published in 1917, the news of slaughter on
mindlessly trudging to get their coffee, of the stale smells of the Western Front had deeply shaken ideas inherited from the
food and alcohol at the end of the day, and of the loneliness of previous century. Never before had a European war killed so
an urban street late at night. many people, and never so efficiently. The new technologies
that had seemingly improved life for so many were used to kill
on an industrial scale.
CONTEXT This made modernist artists deeply skeptical of the modern
world—hence the critical depiction of the city in "Preludes." At
LITERARY CONTEXT the same time, though, modernist thinking stirred up animosity
Eliot wrote "Preludes" during a period of great literary towards older ways of living; after all, it was the old European
experimentation at the start of the 20th century, a period empires that had led the continent into war. Overall, then, the
known as modernism. Writers like James Joyce, Luigi modernist ideas that influenced "Preludes" were at once a
Pirandello, Dorothy Richardson, Guillaume Apollinaire, and revolution against Victorian tradition and a refutation of those
Rainer Maria Rilke had all already published work that who blindly charge ahead fully confident in their new
challenged the established literary norms inherited from the technologies.
19th century. These norms were both formal—that is, related
to the actual way that poems, plays, and novels were expected
to be written—and social: sex, drugs and alcohol, feminism, and MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
working class life all became new subjects for serious literature
during this period. EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Eliot wrote the poems that make up "Preludes" between the • "Preludes" Read Aloud — Listen to famous Shakespearean
ages of 22 and 25, inspired partly by this experimental modern actor John Gielgud read "Preludes" aloud.
atmosphere. Initially published in the avant-garde magazine (https:/
(https://www
/www..youtube.com/watch?v=jzp
outube.com/watch?v=jzpWSsx
WSsxosb8)
osb8)
Blast in 1915, "Preludes" went on to be included in Eliot's first
• Cambridge Companion to T
T.S.
.S. Eliot — Read several essays
collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in1917. The dismal

by leading experts on Eliot, designed to introduce students • The Hollow Men
to his work. (https:/
(https://books.google.co.uk/
/books.google.co.uk/ • The LLo
ove Song of JJ.. Alfred Prufrock
books?id=ybCtA
books?id=ybCtAQ QAA
AAQBA
QBAJJ&printsec=frontco
&printsec=frontcovver&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
er&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false))
• Lecture on Eliot's Auditory Imagination — Renowned
scholar Christopher Ricks lectures on the importance of
HOW T
TO
O CITE
sound in Eliot's work. He plays a rare recording of Eliot
reading "Preludes" at 27.08. (https:/
(https://www
/www..youtube.com/ MLA
watch?v=zhk
watch?v=zhkcrQ09Y
crQ09YdU)
dU) Clement, Mathis. "Preludes." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 28 Oct 2019.
Web. 22 Apr 2020.
• Biogr
Biograph
aphyy of T
T.S.
.S. Eliot — Read a short biography of Eliot on
Yale University's Modernism Lab, a website dedicated to CHICAGO MANUAL
the study of the early 20th century art movement.
(https:/
(https:///modernism.courseresource.
modernism.courseresource.yale.edu/2017/07/
yale.edu/2017/07/ Clement, Mathis. "Preludes." LitCharts LLC, October 28, 2019.
12/t-s-eliot/) Retrieved April 22, 2020. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/t-s-
eliot/preludes.
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