At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, whenthe human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the unexpected guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronizing kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fismmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

Notes

• the human engine: Eliot uses this phrase to depersonalize human beings and to demonstrate their machine-like distance from emotion. (back)
• Tiresias: the blind prophet of Greek mythology; the "fly on the wall" of ‘The Fire Sermon" (back)
• Old man with wrinkled female breasts: Tiresias spent sen=ven years as a woman and is therefore able to view the events of the poem from both the man’s and the woman’s perspective. (back)
• teatime: indication of British identity (back)
• guest: or in modern parlance, "booty call" (back)
• Bradford millionaire: nouveau riche of Eliot’s Britain (back)
• unreproved, if undesired: This phrase indicates the woman’s emotional distance from the sexual act that is about to happen. (back)
• I who have sat by Thebes below the wall: Tiresias is witnessing the events of the poem in the same way he witnessed the fate of Oedipus. (back)
• one final patronizing kiss: This phrase reveals the sexual power relationship between the man and the woman; the man is in control and he knows it. (back)
• record on the gramophone: Eliot implies the song the woman listens to is one from Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield that includes the line "When lovely woman stoops to folly" (back)
• "This music crept by me from upon the waters": from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (back)
• Magnus Martyr: a church located near a fishmarket and a bar where fishmen were known to gather. The bar and the church are juxtaposed in these lines; Eliot is implying that the two places play similar roles in the lives of the people. (back)