Ash Wednesday Lyrics

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull.
And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live?
And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness
, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,

We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject.
The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose
. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister

Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.


At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.


At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute
.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;

Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.


IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green

Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and in knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand

In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.

The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme
. Redeem
The time.
Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless
, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken


Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice


Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose


O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn


Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things

From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings


And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover

And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates

And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.


Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

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About

Genius Annotation

T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” has been described by poet Edwin Muir as “one of the most moving poems he [Eliot] has written, and perhaps the most perfect.” It is Eliot’s “conversion poem,” written at the time that he formally declared himself to the Anglican church, to which he baptised and confirmed in 1928. However, Eliot’s poem is not an ecstasy, or mystical vision—it does not dramatize the encounter with the divine as the central issue of the poem. Rather, “Ash-Wednesday” must be seen as working out the tension between matter and spirit and a contemplation on the conscious choice to pursue God.

Written between 1927 and 1930, the first three sections were published separately—part I as “Perch' Io non Spero” in Spring 1928; part II as “Salutation” in December 1927 and January 1928; and part III as “Som de l'escalina” in Autumn 1929. The poem was published in its final, complete form in 1930. The poem unsettled some secular critics, while others remarked upon its theological and philosophical depth, and said it was the best poem he had written.

While not as allusive as The Waste Land or as structurally complex as the Four Quartets, the poem includes many references to literature both ancient and modern, especially Dante, Shakespeare, and of course, the Bible.

Five years earlier, Eliot wrote a despairing critique of the materialistic world he perceived around him in his poem The Hollow Men ends with the pathos of ‘Not with a bang but a whimper’.

It is particularly Dante and his ‘Divine Comedy’ that is key to understanding Ash Wednesday. Two of Eliot’s most famous earlier poems directly draw on Dante’s work: the epigraph to ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and the lines about the ‘Unreal City’ in The Waste Land (‘I had not thought death had undone so many’) are a n approximate translation from Dante’s original Italian.

Eliot also draws on another poem by Dante, the Vita Nuova (literally ‘New Life’), a collection of courtly love poems about idealised beauty and its relation to religious faith. Ash-Wednesday is not only a religious poem, but also a love poem — that is, spiritual rather than worldly love. The female figures who appear in the poem, the ‘Lady’ and the ‘veiled sister’, reflect the Virgin Mary rather than any earthly woman.

After the misanthropic earlier compositions, Eliot offers in Ash Wednesday redemption through God, spiritual growth and joy.

The verse is free-flowing with irregular line-length and stanza lengths. Subtle irregular rhyme provides some coherence. Imagery established in the first stanza is picked up in later stanzas and on to the end.

Eliot reads the poem aloud:

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