As many literature teachers know/ELA, TS ELIOT J. Alfred Prufrock’s love song It is worth teaching for any number of reasons, from mood and story to form to voice, tone and internal monologue.
The images and language of the poem (diction) make it useful to even explore relations ideas such as rejection, overcoming and social anxiety.
This animated version visualizes and emphasizes how images establish and emphasize mood and, of course, back.
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock Text Text and Audio read by the author
Elliott’s references to Dante, Shakespeare and the Bible make teaching hints and inter -otext references to discuss how the authors of the layer of meaning and drawing from existing texts (something that music can be used to do).
See below for the full version of Lovesong by J. Alfred Prufrock Full text and audio record read by the author
The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot (1915)
If I believed my answer was
Of a man who has never returned to the world,
This storium flame without shocks.
But for what this bottom is, is Giammai
I do not return to anyone if the truth,
Without the topic of shame, I answer you.
– Dante, InfernoCanto 27
Allow us then, you and I,
When the evening spread against the sky
As a patient -essential patient;
Let’s go, through certain semi-off streets,
The muttering is retreating
On restless nights in cheap hotels overnight
And restaurants with sawdust with oyster shells:
Streets that follow as an annoying argument
Insidious
To bring you a huge question …
Oh, don’t ask, “What is it?”
Leave us and we made our visit.
In the room women come and go
Speaking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs his back on the panels of the window,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window
Licking his tongue at the corners of the evening,
Lingers on the pools standing in channels,
Let it fall on your back soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped from the terrace, make a sudden jump,
And seeing that it was a mild October night,
Curved once around the house and fell asleep.
And there will really be time
For the yellow smoke that slides down the street,
Rubbing his back on the panels of the window;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a person to meet the persons you meet;
There will be time to kill and create,
And time for all works and days on hands
This lifting and questioning on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time still for a hundred Neshas,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before taking toast and tea.
In the room women come and go
Speaking of Michelangelo.
And there will really be time
I wonder, “Do I laugh?” And “I dare?”
It’s time to look back and get down the staircase,
With a bald place in the middle of my hair –
(They will say, “How his hair gets thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar is mounted firmly to the chin,
Rich and modest and modest, but is asserted by a simple pin –
(They will say, “But how his hands and feet are thin!”)
Do you laugh
To break the universe?
In a minute there is time
For solutions and revisions that a minute will turn.
Because I already know them all, I know them all –
Have known the dinners, mornings, afternoon,
I measured my life with spoons for coffee;
I know the voices die with a dying fall
Under the music from a more remote room.
So how do I guess?
And I already know the eyes, I know them all –
Eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I was formulated, I forgave on a pin,
When I am nailed and twist on the wall,
Then how can I start
Let’s spit out all the edges of my days and ways?
And how do I guess?
And I already know the hands, I know them all –
Weapons that are bracelets and white and naked
(But in the light of the lamp, removed with light brown hair!)
Is a perfume from a dress
That makes me so deviation?
Hands that lie along the table or wrap around a scarf.
And then should I guess?
And how do I start?
Shall I say I went to dusk through narrow streets
And watched Dima rising from the pipes
To single men in a shirt sleeves leaning with windows? …
I had to be a pair of ragged nails
Break through the floors of silent seas.
And in the afternoon, in the evening, sleep so calmly!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Fell asleep … tired … or this is Mallings,
Stretched on the floor, here next to you and me.
Should you, after tea and cakes and Isices,
Do you have the power to force the moment to its crisis?
But even though I cried and fast, I cried and prayed,
Although I have seen my head (grown up slightly bald) brought on a plate,
I am not a prophet – and here is no great matter;
I saw the moment of flickering my greatness,
And I saw the eternal leg holding my coat and snot,
And in short, I was afraid.
And in the end it would be worth it,
After the glasses, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some conversations about you and me,
Would it be worth it while,
To have bitten the question with a smile,
To pull out the universe of a ball
To direct it to some prevailing question,
To say, “I am Lazar, come from the dead,
Return to tell you all, I’ll tell you all ” –
If such, settling a pillow to the head,
I have to say, “I didn’t mean that at all.
That’s not all. “
And in the end it would be worth it,
Would it be worth it while,
After the sunsets and the double and sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the tea cups, after the skirts tracked on the floor –
And that, and much more? –
It is impossible to say exactly what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern tossed the nerves into patterns on screen:
Would it be worth it while
If such a pillow or throwing a scarf,
And to turn to the window, he has to say:
“This is not at all,
I didn’t mean that at all. “
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor should I be;
I am the accompanying of the Lord, the one who will
To swell progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; Undoubtedly, an easy tool,
Discardy, I’m glad I’m helpful,
Political, cautious and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a little dumb;
At times, really, almost ridiculous –
Almost, at times, the fool.
I’m getting old … I’m getting old …
I’ll wear the bottom of my pants, wrapped.
To split my hair behind? Do I dare to eat peach?
I’ll wear white flannel pants and walk on the beach.
I have heard the mermaids sing, everyone.
I don’t think they will sing me.
I have seen them ride by sea on the waves
Combining white hair on the waves blown back
When the wind blows water white and black.
We have lingered in the marine cameras
By marine girls destroyed with red and brown by seaweed
Until the human voices wake us up and we drown.
Full text version; The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock Text Text and Audio read by the author
