A Cooking Egg (by T.S. Eliot)

T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot

A Cooking Egg
[from Poems, 1920]

     En l'an trentiesme de mon age
     Que toutes mes hontes j'ay beucs ...

Pipit sat upright in her chair
  Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
  Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
  Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
  An Invitation to the Dance.
                  . . . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
  For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
  And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
  For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond:
We two shall lie together, lapt
  In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
  Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
  Than Pipit's experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
  Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
  Piccarda de Donati will conduct me ...
                  . . . . . .
But where is the penny world I bought
  To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
  From Kentish Town and Golder's Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

  Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
  Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s 



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Comments

  • 5/20/2009 11:31 AM Willie wrote:
    Thanks for putting up this rather obscure Eliot poem. Don't think I've ever read it before. Not Tommy's best poem, to be sure; but the Sidney/kidney rhyme is a loud echo of Laforgue, the fin-de-siecle French poet who so much fired young Tommy's imagination, and it's great to see this influence at work. Thanks kindly!
    Reply to this
    1. 5/22/2009 6:43 AM Jesus Crisis wrote:
      Thank you, Willie!  I'm woefully ignorant of Laforgue - now you've got me wanting to investigate.
      Reply to this
  • 4/6/2011 1:14 PM rusvmf wrote:
    Why am I so afraid of depth?
    Reply to this
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