Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Poems. 1920.

4. A Cooking Egg

PIPIT sate upright in her chair

Some distance from where I was sitting;

Views of the Oxford Colleges

Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,

Her grandfather and great great aunts,

Supported on the mantelpiece

An Invitation to the Dance.

I shall not want Honour in Heaven

For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney

And have talk with Coriolanus

And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven

For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond:

We two shall lie together, lapt

In a five per cent Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,

Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;

Her anecdotes will be more amusing

Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:

Madame Blavatsky will instruct me

In the Seven Sacred Trances;

Piccarda de Donati will conduct me…

But where is the penny world I bought

To eat with Pipit behind the screen?

The red-eyed scavengers are creeping

From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.

Over buttered scones and crumpets

Weeping, weeping multitudes

Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s.