Commit Poetry: Prufrock – Part 7

Continuing to complete the dare issued by Tweetspeak Poetry in the fall–to memorize T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

About those sprinkled streets… my sleuthing suggests Eliot could be referring to streets that were sprinkled with oil or water to settle the dust.

And the magic lantern? This could refer to an early type of slide projector. The magic lantern (or sciopticon) projected an image from a glass plate.

What is your favorite line in this section?