Whispers of Immortality
Whispers of Immortality Lyrics
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
About
The title of this poem is a satirical reference to Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Like Eliot’s other satirical quatrains, “Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” and “Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” “Whispers of Immortality” was completed during the summer of 1918 and first published in the September 1918 edition of Chicago’s Little Review. The poem deals with both the physicality and the philosophy of death.
Ezra Pound would take a key role in editing these poems and directing Eliot’s reading, prefiguring his important work in shaping The Waste Land into the poem we know today.
Pound pushed Eliot strongly toward the work of Théophile Gautier, from whom Eliot picked up the sharp tetrameter quatrains nd esoteric vocabulary. There is an ABCB rhyme scheme that isn’t rigid, The satirical rhymes in the poems are gleaned from one of Eliot’s biggest influences at the time, Jules Laforgue.
Structurally the poem is perfectly symmetrical, in two parts. Each comprises four quatrains, that is four-lined stanzas. The first four deal with death and the second four with eroticism. The metre is broadly iambic tetrameter, that is, four-metrical feet per line. There is a loose ABCB rhyme scheme.
The voice is that of a third person narrator who is clearly the poet, and the tone wry and darkly humorous, suited for the acabre s;ubject matter.
Gautier
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 1.Gerontion
- 5.Le Directeur
- 7.Lune de Miel
- 10.Whispers of Immortality