Fragment of a Soliloquy1

from an unwritten Tragedy in several Acts entitled

“One Against Too Many”

or

“Alone in the Jungle”

by the author of the celebrated vocal refrain

“Nobody knows how I feel about you.”2

(Fabricius loquitur3)

. . . Methought a voice fell sweetly on mine ear4

Whose honey’d music, like to the silvern tongues

Of far-off bells that sound yet make no sense,

Wound through the mazy convolutions

Towards the guarded citadel of the brain,

Which having reached it still did speak no sense,

But, like a most deceiving visitor,

Gained treach’rous entrance crying Hey to the Ward.5

Then what a horrid metamorphosis

Befell, as when the distant station

Fades out in crackling thunders and the rude

Teuton announcer scarifies the air,

And oil of olives turns to vitriol …

[Geoffrey Faber]

Notes
  1. 1.

    A carbon copy, with the Eliot Estate, gives the title as ‘Portion of a SOLILOQUY’.

  2. 2.

    Popular song: ‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’.

  3. 3.

    ‘Fabricius speaks.’ Fabricius is a jocular alias for Faber. Ricks and McCue identify Fabricius as ‘Roman consul and censor, admired for austerity, high principle and incorruptibility’ (Poems I, 1212). Another possible source for the name Fabricius was Dr Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente, also known as Hieronymus Fabricius (1533–1619), an esteemed medical researcher, Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at Padua.

  4. 4.

    Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (c. 1120), trans. Edward FitzGerald, fifth edn text (1889), II:

    ‘Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried’

  5. 5.

    JDH note: ‘A punning reference to Mr. H.’