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Drifting lands walkthrough no commentary3/10/2023 The speaker is trailing off, unsure of where he's going. The use of ellipsis (…) at the end of this line also contributes to the overall lack of closure that you get throughout. If you want to go the more general route, this line could also just be the speaker of this poem being really depressed about the world.But Lac Léman, or Lake Geneva, is also a very important lake western Switzerland, so Eliot could be alluding to that as well, although we don't know what anyone in Switzerland has to weep about.Eliot's speaker claims, "By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…" (182), which might hint at the weeping that the Hebrews did when they stopped by the rivers of Babylon and remembered Zion, the homeland they were exiled from.But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. Wear close-toed shoes, please.īy the waters of Leman I sat down and wept… Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. Welcome to the Modern World, everyone.And along with the litter replacing the scenic riverbank, the nymphs have been replaced by these city directors, who sound way less awesome, seeing as how they make the river all polluted and gross.The people who've left this stuff behind aren't just the riff-raff, either, but are probably the "heirs of city directors" (180), meaning that even people of privilege have turned to slobs in the 20th century.But he's not so confusing that he's writing a poem called "The Waste Land" about a river that's.clean.Yeah, we know: Eliot says, "the river bears no " (emphasis added), but that's actually a sarcastic remark, meaning that all the litter is there now, but wasn't in Spenser's time.Eliot is suggesting to us, though, that Spenser's Thames was very different than the one of Eliot's time, which is polluted with "empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends" (177-178).The line "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song" is a line from a poem called "Prothalamion" by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) that celebrates marriage along the Thames. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors Departed, have left no addresses. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer night. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. Now, you've just got an empty wind in an empty place.This line tells us that the magic is now gone from what used to be a very magical place, a place that inspired poets to write about love and beauty. The nymphs he's talking about are probably the Naiads, or nymphs of the river, according to Greek mythology. The most significant part of these lines comes with the phrase, "The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard.But there's a lot of wetness in this scene, compared to the dryness and drought-like quality of earlier sections with all those shadows and red rock. The overall tone, as you might expect, continues to be pretty dreary.There are no longer any leaves overhead, acting as a canopy. That's what he's referring to the river's tent's being broken. Leaves have fallen and have "snk into the wet bank" (174).
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