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Home  »  Poems  »  4. A Cooking Egg

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Poems. 1920.

4. A Cooking Egg

  • En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
  • Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues…

  • 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.