The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

I am currently reading Selected Poems by T. S. Eliot and I have simply fallen in love with him.
I had never read much, if any, of his poems but from the first stanza I was hooked! Isn't it just wonderful discovering "new" poets?

So far, one of my favourite Eliot poems has been "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" which is one of his most famous poems.
It is a rather long poem so I will only share an excerpt from it. (This excerpt starts {and ends} somewhere in the middle of the poem. I chose this particular section because I amazingly found three images on weheartit that go with it.)



















Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?














And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
___________________________

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
















{Pictures found here, here, and here.}