Notes to Eliot's Essay on "The Metaphysical Poets"

1. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler. Selected and edited, with an Essay, by Herbert J. C. Grierson (Oxford: CIarendon Press. London; Milford). Eliot's essay was a review of Grierson's anthology published in the Times Literary Supplement.  Return

2.    O transparent geraniums, warrior incantations, 
        Monomaniacal sacrileges!
        Packing materials, shamelessnesses, shower baths! O wine presses
        Of great evening vintages!
        Hard-pressed baby linen,
        Thyrsis in the depths of the woods!
        Transfusions, reprisals,
        Churchings, compresses, and the eternal potion,
        Angelus! No longer to be borne [are]
        Catastrophic marriages! Catastrophic marriages! 

Jules Laforgue, from "Last Poems X" (1890).  Return

3.     "She is far away, she weeps, / The great wind mourns also." Laforgue, from "Last Poems XI."  Return 

4. For the child, in love with maps and prints,
    The universe matches his vast appetite.
    Ah, how big the world is by lamplight!
    How small the world is to the eyes of memory!

Charles Baudelaire, "La Voyage."  Return