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The poem's haunting imagery creates a sense of emotional depth, evoking a nostalgic longing for the past and a profound sense of sorrow. The speaker's focus on the eyes serves as a poignant metaphor for the lasting impact of human connection, even in the face of separation and death.
Webster was much possessed by death. And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground. Leaned backward with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls. Stared from the sockets of the eyes! He knew that thought clings round dead limbs. Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Analysis (ai): This poem explores the themes of death and mortality through the lens of three individuals: Webster, Donne, and Grishkin. Webster, consumed by thoughts of death, sees through the superficiality of life to the underlying reality of mortality.
- Stanza One
- Stanza Two
- Stanza Three
- Stanza Four
- Stanza Five
- Stanza Six
- Stanza Seven
- Stanza Eight
In the first stanza of ‘Whispers of Immortality’, the speaker discusses the beliefs and works of John Webster. He is best known today as a dramatist and author of ‘The Duchess of Malfi. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and appealed to Eliot in how he got to the truth of a situation. The first line makes this clear as the speaker states that Web...
In the second stanza, the speaker expands on the sight of a skinless person. This same creature which lacks the outward appearance of humanity, has “Daffodil bulbs instead of…eyes.” This is another terrifying sight and is related directly to a play by Webster titled, The White Devil. Towards the end of that particular work, a ghost brings in a flow...
In the next four lines, the speaker turns away from Webster to discuss English poet John Donne. The speaker states that Donne was “such another” like Webster, who prioritized his senses. He was deeply engaged with his world and sought out all experiences. Through his thoughts, Donne came to know the world and, more importantly, realize the ever-pre...
The fourth stanza makes clear that Donne had a good understanding of what death is and how important it is to one’s life. He understood the “anguish” that is part of one’s bones. It is an “ague,” or illness, deep within the body. So integral is humanity’s path toward death that it lives within one’s physical frame. The next two lines explain that e...
When Eliot gets to the fifth stanza, the poem changes. In its original form, the two sections were separated by five dots, denoting a change in the current topic but not the larger themes. He immediately refers to “Grishkin.” This person is not well-known like Webster and Donne before her. It has been speculated that she was a Russian woman who was...
In the sixth stanza, the speaker introduces another image, that of a “Brazilian jaguar.” He compares the cat to Grishkin and describes how she is about to “scamper” after a “marmoset.” The two are contrasted in their power. The marmoset is helpless at the hands of the jaguar. She moves with the “effluence of cat.” The final line states that Grishki...
Although Grishkin was favorably compared with the jaguar in the sixth stanza, in the seventh, she overtakes it. Both, when they are in their native homes, whether in a “drawing-room” or the ”arboreal gloom” of the forest, smell distinctive. Grishkin obviously smells more favorably, in this case, “rank[er],” than the jaguar does. Its smell is less o...
The eighth stanza ends the poem with a strange yet clever conclusion. The speaker states that the “Abstract Entities,” or the essence of the world, circle around Grishkin. This philosophical language relates back to the earlier stanzas in which the speaker refers to “pneumonic bliss.” He states that “our lot,” meaning all human beings, from the spe...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
The answer that is usually given is the mass death of the First World War, in which almost a million British men gave their lives in combat. Death, then, has undone not the dead, but the living. What lends this interpretation credence is the fact that Eliot had already used Dante’s Inferno as the epigraph for an earlier poem, his 1915 poem ...
Nov 17, 2014 · Published in 1925, ‘The Hollow Men’ was something of a transitional poem for Eliot, coming between the success of The Waste Land (see below) and Eliot’s later, more religiously oriented poetry such as Ash-Wednesday and Four Quartets.
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I. The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruellest month, breeding. Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing. Memory and desire, stirring. Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering. Earth in forgetful snow, feeding. A little life with dried tubers.
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