[No surviving envelope]
IBurnt Nortonits composition a form of communion with EH;a6 might have written to you this morning, and thereby made more certain of catching the boat than I am in writing in the evening; but the fact is that I was getting on nicely with my poem that I call ‘Burnt Norton’: and I feel as much alone with you when I am engaged in writing poetry, or what seems to me at the time to be poetry, as when I am writing you a letter. That is hardly fair to you, because a poem does not reach you as quickly as a letter, and hardly takes the place of it – though it may have an equally important place in our relationship in the long run. I can’t tell whether this will be a good poem or a bad one; at any rate, it is I think a new kind of love poem, and it is written for you, and it is fearfully obscure: so, if it is published in my volume, you will, if asked, be able truthfully to say either that you do understand it or that you don’t understand it, according to which reply is more convenient at the moment and in reply to that particular enquirer. IShelley, Percy Bysshefurnished original Burnt Norton epigraph;a3 hadHale, EmilyTSE's names, nicknames and terms of endearment for;x3'Emilia' and Shelley's Epipsychidion;c5 thought of putting at the head a quotation from ‘Epipsychidion’, which Shelley wrote for lady named Emilia, i.e.:
My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
—Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
—Of such hard matter dost thou entertain,1
ButHeraclitusquoted in epigraphs to Burnt Norton;a1 IBurnt Nortonepigraphs from Heraclitus;a7 have settled upon two quotations from Heraclitus (in Greek) which make the poem more difficult to understand than it would be without them.
This is me being silly – although you will find that I am silly in all sorts of ways besides this. Here I have been writing for a month since your departure, and I still feel as intoxicated when I sit down to write; and I suppose that that is my way of bearing the pain of separation, like the letters you wrote to me on the boat, letters I love so dearly every word of them and loved your behaving as you said you did. If I had been going on a voyage, after we parted, I should have wanted to flirt with anybody, assuming that I would never see her again, just because my feelings towards you required some outlet, even absurd – but remaining behind and seeing only people I knew already and would see again, I did nothing of the sort – nor am likely to! IHale, Emilyrelationship with TSE;w9TSE's chance to be frivolous;b3 love to be foolish with you, because my feelings are so serious that they are far below the level of ordinary serious conversation or correspondence, and therefore nothing in words except a kind of levity seems to be of use. The feeling of tenderness concentrated on one person is so tremendous that it is quite beyond words – what is stranger is that it is quite beyond any expression – I don’t believe that anything would ever wholly express it – perhaps the nearest thing is sleep! do you see what I mean? I believe that to go to sleep in each other’s arms would be the only complete expression and relief.
I haven’t, as it happens, anything very important to tell you in the way of events, which is fortunate, as I don’t feel in the mood for a chronicle, or for philosophising either. IHale, Emilycorrespondence with TSE;w3by day, by night;g3 think I might arrange my life so as to write alternately first thing in the morning and last thing at night – in the morning to satisfy our minds, and at night to satisfy our feelings – say one morning or two evenings a week. I want to satisfy you completely, and your mind as well as your emotions; and I want you to know that I can say what is in my mind, as well as what is in my heart, to you as I cannot to anyone else: it isn’t only one part but the whole of me that is yours, and it is the whole of you that I want – as we have each other already. Now it is late Monday night, and next I mean to write early Friday morning, or Thursday morning.
I have suffered a good deal lately, from separation from you; and yet you have, every moment, been ever so close to me, in me.
I wrote twice to you on Friday the 10th, and I have just put a tick in my diary to indicate that I have written tonight.
InTennyson, Alfred, 1st Baronadapted to express TSE's own feelings;a3 writing'Introduction' (to Poems of Tennyson)and Rosary Gardens without EH;a4 about Tennyson I came across a passage of ‘In Memoriam’ which fits my feelings now about Rosary Gardens:
Dark house, by which once more I stand,
—Here in the long unlovely street,
—Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasped no more –
—Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
—And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door,
She is not here; but far away
—The noise of life begins again,
—And ghastly through the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day
There, I have only changed ‘he’ to ‘she’!
1.See Shelley’s Advertisement for Epipsychidion:
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza [below] is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone
Voi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do),
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
SeeShelley, Percy ByssheTSE and Epipsychidion;a4n Frances Dickey, ‘May the Record Speak’, 447–50. ‘Multiple threads connect “Epipsychidion” with Eliot’s correspondence, poetry, and life. Eliot refers to Hale as “Emilia” and as a bird, nightingale, and mocking-bird, echoing Shelley’s address to Emilia as “poor captive bird” and ‘my adored Nightingale” (lines 5, 10). Shelley declares “I am not thine: I am part of thee” (line 52), similar to Eliot’s declaration in his December 11 letter that they are each a part of the other. Eliot also may have found the narrative of “Epipsychidion” particularly apt to his own history. This poem narrates the poet’s youthful adoration of an ideal, “the loadstar of my one desire”… In a prefatory “Advertisement” printed with “Epipsychidion,” Shelley compares his poem to the Vita Nuova. In fact, as Eliot well knew, the three lines that he quoted in his letter to Hale were not written by Shelley but translated by him from Dante’s canzone che ’ntendo il terzo ciel movete (You, whose intellect the third sphere moves), for use as the epigraph to “Epipsychidion.” Shelley leads us back to Eliot’s Dantean obsession. In toying with Shelley’s epigraph, Eliot likens himself to the Romantic poet as a follower of Dante and lover of Emilia’ (448–9).