DENIS DONOGHUE
29
Pascal ("Teach us to sit still");
(2)
texts from European literature,
especially Dante, Cavalcanti, and Shakespeare; and (3) the common
worldly language of reference and appreciation, but inclined toward
generalization and away from specification or singularity-"the van–
ished power of the usual reign." The speaker is free to resort to any of
these three for critique, irony, or acknowledgment.
The poem is a dramatic monologue, but not in Browning's manner.
Eliot's implied speaker is a figure placed between being and absence,
"between dying and birth," more than a wraith but less than a person,
a voice to which we are discouraged from attaching further bodily
attributes. We can't even be sure that he's old, despite "Why should the
aged eagle stretch his wings?" The voice may be entirely textual, an
emanation from the English language in the Christian and Latin phase
of its history. As in an examination of conscience, the speaker is not
working toward a spiritual conclusion: ideally, there is no end to such
an analysis, least of all the felicity of having reached a self-edifying con–
clusion. But the examination differs in this respect from the one pre–
scribed by the Christian Church for its members: to achieve difficult
sincerity, the speaker can't be content to divide himself into body and
soul and deny the body's appeal. He must act justly toward the world,
body, desire, and time; not only toward God, the Church, spirit, soul,
and eternity. He is in the confessional, speaking to a priest in darkness:
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
