- The Waste Land
- Author: T.S. Eliot (about the author)
- Full name: Thomas Stearns Eliot
Published in 1922
Setting and Background: Modern Industrial Society
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Excerpt from 'The Waste Land', part V. What the Thunder Said - lines 331 - 359
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Here is no water but only rock
- Rock and no water and the sandy road
- The road winding above among the mountains
- Which are mountains of rock without water
- If there were water we should stop and drink
- Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
- Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
- If there were only water amongst the rock
- Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
- Here one can neither stand not lie nor sit
- There is not even silence in the mountains
- But dry sterile thunder without rain
- There is not even solitude in the mountains
- But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
- From doors of mudcracked houses
- If there were water
- And no rock
- If there were rock
- And also water
- And water
- A spring
- A pool among the rock
- If there were the sound of water only
- Not the cicada
- And dry grass singing
- But sound of water over a rock
- Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
- Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
- But there is no water
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