T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night (Page 15)

T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night (Page 15)

“Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.”

My first response to this poem was to re-read the first stanza several times because I was struck by how beautiful the language is. The beautiful prose that Eliot uses in this poem is such that even for a reader with no context or previous knowledge of the poem (I didn’t) it is still easy to take something from. While the meaning and themes of the poem are complex and wholly enjoyable, so too is the pleasure received from reading the gorgeous language. The first stanza of the poem is my favorite – I have distinct times I can relate to Eliot, walking down the street watching the moon and street lamps and letting your mind flow between the past, present and future. My favorite lines in the poem, based simply on the language, are
“Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory”

This is one of my favorite of Eliot’s poems that I have read, and I was instantly captured by the sounds of the words and flow of the writing.

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