The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock
by T. S. Eliot
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse The epigraph comes from the Inferno of Dante's Divine Comedy (XXVII, 61-66). Count
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Guido da Montefeltro, embodied in a flame, replies to Dante's question about his
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. identity as one condemned for giving lying advice: “If I believed that my answer would
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would move no more, but
because no one has ever returned alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can reply
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, with no fear of infamy.”
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table; etherized: anesthetized.

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, !!

The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
5 !!
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: !!
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
!!
To lead you to an overwhelming question ... 10 !!
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” !!
! !!
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go !
Talking of Michelangelo. Michaelangelo: Italian painter, poet,
! and sculptor (1475-1564).
!!
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, !!
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
!!
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, !!
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 !!
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. !!
! !!
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
!!
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25 !!
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
!!
There will be time to murder and create, !
works and days: Hesiod's Works and
And time for all the works and days of hands
Days, an 8th-century (B.C.)
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 description of rural life.
Time for you and time for me,

!1
 Prufrock (cont’d)

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, !

And for a hundred visions and revisions, !
Before the taking of a toast and tea. !
! !
In the room the women come and go 35 !
Talking of Michelangelo. !
! !!
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
!!
Time to turn back and descend the stair, !!
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
40 !!
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, morning coat: a formal coat with tail.
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin –
!!
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") !!
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
!!
In a minute there is time !!
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
! !!
For I have known them all already, known them all: !!
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
50 !!
I know the voices dying with a dying fall dying fall: love-sick Duke Orsino's
opening line in Shakespeare's Twelfth
Beneath the music from a farther room. Night, "That strain again! It had a
     So how should I presume? dying fall" (I.i.1), referring to a piece
! of music. Cf. "Portrait of a Lady," line
122
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
55
!!
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, !!
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, !!
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
butt-ends: the discarded, unsmoked
Then how should I begin ends of cigarettes or cigars.
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
     And how should I presume?
!
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
     And should I then presume?

!2
 Prufrock (cont’d)

! !!
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
70 !!
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ... !!
! !!
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. !!
! !!
     *        *        *        *
! !!
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
75 !!
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, !!
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. !!
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 !
Herod gave John the Baptist's
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, decapitated head to the dancer
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon Salome as a reward (Mark 6.17-29;
Matthew 14.3-11).
a platter,
I am no prophet -- and here's no great matter;
!
I am no prophet: Amos said, "I was
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, no prophet, neither was I a prophet's
son; but I was an herdman, and a
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 gatherer of sycomore fruit" (Amos
And in short, I was afraid. 7.14), when commanded by King
! Amaziah of Bethel not to prophesy.
!!
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, !
Cf. Andrew Marvell's "Let us roll all
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, our strength, and all / Our
Would it have been worth while, 90 sweetness, up into one ball" ("To his
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, Coy Mistress").
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
!
Lazarus: Jesus brought Lazarus, the
To roll it towards some overwhelming question, brother of Mary and Martha, back
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, from the dead by literally entering
his tomb and bringing out the
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -- 95 recently buried man alive (John
If one, settling a pillow by her head 11.1-44). Jesus also tells a parable of
how the poor man Lazarus went to
     Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
heaven, and the rich man Dives to
     That is not it, at all."
! hell, and how Dives begged Abraham
to send Lazarus back to warn his five
And would it have been worth it, after all, brothers about damnation and was
rebuked "if they hear not Moses and
Would it have been worth while, 100 the prophets, neither will they be
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, persuaded, though one rose from the
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along dead" (Luke 16.19-31).
the floor --
!
sprinkled streets: necessary to keep
And this, and so much more?-- the dust down.

!3
 Prufrock (cont’d)
It is impossible to say just what I mean! a magic lantern: device that throws a
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:105 magnified image of a picture on
glass onto a white screen in a dark
Would it have been worth while room.
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, !
Prince Hamlet: not Shakespeare's
And turning toward the window, should say:
noble prince, who resisted the
     "That is not it at all, temptation to commit suicide in his
     That is not what I meant, at all." 110 "To be or not to be" speech (alluded
! to at line's end), but instead
characters like Rosencrantz and
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Guildenstern (cf. 112-16), Polonius
Am an attendant lord, one that will do (cf. 117), and Osric (cf. 118). Ezra
Pound wrote Harriet Monroe on Jan.
To swell a progress, start a scene or two, 31, 1915: “I dislike the paragraph
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, about Hamlet, but it is an early and
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 cherished bit and T.E. won't give it
up, and as it is the only portion of
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; the poem that most readers will like
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; at first reading, I don't see that it
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-- will do much harm" (Letters of Ezra
Pound 1907-1941, ed. D. D. Paige
Almost, at times, the Fool. [London: Faber and Faber, 1951]:
! 92-93).
!
I grow old ... I grow old ... 120
progress: the travelling of a royal
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. prince through the English
! countryside, from stop to stop,
together with wagons loaded with
Shall I part my hair behind?  Do I dare to eat a peach? possessions, and with servants and
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. courtiers.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. !
! high sentence: a phrase from
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 meaning "elevated, serious and
! moral thoughts expressed formally."

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves the Fool: Shakespeare's plays have
several characters called "the Fool,"
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back including the king's loyal servant
When the wind blows the water white and black. and critic in King Lear.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea the bottoms of my trousers rolled:
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 that is, with cuffs, a novelty in
fashion.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
! !
Shall I part my hair behind?: an
! avant-garde, potentially shocking

! hair-style.
!
! Cf. John Donne's "Song," with its
"Teach me to hear mermaids
Original text: T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (London: The Egoist, singing." Arhtur Symons' The
1917): 9-16.
 Symbolist Movement in Literature
Composition date: February 1910 - July 1911 (London: Heinemann, 1899) quotes
"El Desdichado" (`The
First publication date: June 1915 
 Disinherited') by Gérard de
Publication date note: First printed in Poetry 6.3 (Chicago, June 1915): Nerval(1808-55): "J'ai rêvé dans la
130-35. Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (London: Faber and grotte où nage la sirène" (`I have
dreamed in the cave where the siren
Faber, 1969): A1, C18

swims'; p. 37).

!4