I am feeling very stupid but I cannot parse the lines:
"And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows."
The first line is clear enough, the second a bit obscure - I know everybody these days uses "careen" instead of "career" but did Meredith? No! So it must mean his huge bulk tilted over, which makes sense. In the third line, I couldn't work out which was the verb. Is Lucifer the black planet that shadows Arctic snows? That seems to be the only sane contruction.
So he did indeed. That's one I've managed to read without really taking it in, all the times I've read through Prufrock and Other Observations, so I'm grateful to you for making me go back and read it with attention!
Not sure what to make of Eliot's use of the phrase Sally. In the Meredith, the sense is Aristotelian: "Beyond the circle of the moon there is no evil." Auden's "hidden law" operates this way. But in Eliot it's what? The the dusty truths in old books?
Heh. I know I read the Meredith poem in college, but most likely not since. And when I got to the last line my initial reaction was a very confused thought that Meredith was alluding to Eliot. Oh wait....
I am feeling very stupid but I cannot parse the lines:
"And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows."
The first line is clear enough, the second a bit obscure - I know everybody these days uses "careen" instead of "career" but did Meredith? No! So it must mean his huge bulk tilted over, which makes sense. In the third line, I couldn't work out which was the verb. Is Lucifer the black planet that shadows Arctic snows? That seems to be the only sane contruction.
Yeah, Lucifer is the black planet, in the sense of something in the sky, careening around the globe, from Africa to the Arctic.
T. S. Eliot borrowed the last line of Meridith's poem, "the army of unalterable law", for his poem "Cousin Nancy". The quotation is also the last line
in Eliot's poem.
So he did indeed. That's one I've managed to read without really taking it in, all the times I've read through Prufrock and Other Observations, so I'm grateful to you for making me go back and read it with attention!
For anyone else who, like me, might not have paid sufficient attention to that poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13225/cousin-nancy
Not sure what to make of Eliot's use of the phrase Sally. In the Meredith, the sense is Aristotelian: "Beyond the circle of the moon there is no evil." Auden's "hidden law" operates this way. But in Eliot it's what? The the dusty truths in old books?
Heh. I know I read the Meredith poem in college, but most likely not since. And when I got to the last line my initial reaction was a very confused thought that Meredith was alluding to Eliot. Oh wait....