“La Figlia Che Piange” Introduction

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“La Figlia Che Piange” Summary

“La Figlia Che Piange” Themes

• 

  Love, Heartbreak, and Regret

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• 

  Emotional Attachment vs. Aesthetic Detachment

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “La Figlia Che Piange”

• Before Line 1, Lines 1-3

  O quam te memorem virgo...
  Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
  Lean on a garden urn—
  Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 4-7

  Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
  Fling them to the ground and turn
  With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
  But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 8-12

  So I would have had him leave,
  So I would have had her stand and grieve,
  So he would have left
  As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
  As the mind deserts the body it has used.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 13-16

  I should find
  Some way incomparably light and deft,
  Some way we both should understand,
  Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-20

  She turned away, but with the autumn weather
  Compelled my imagination many days,
  Many days and many hours:
  Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 21-24

  And I wonder how they should have been together!
  I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
  Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
  The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

  

  

  

  

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“La Figlia Che Piange” Symbols

• 

  The Urn

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• 

  Garden/Flowers

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“La Figlia Che Piange” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

  

  

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“La Figlia Che Piange” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Pavement
• Urn
• Fugitive
• Incomparably
• Faithless
• Compelled
• Pose
• Cogitations
• Amaze
• Repose

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “La Figlia Che Piange”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“La Figlia Che Piange” Speaker

“La Figlia Che Piange” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “La Figlia Che Piange”

More “La Figlia Che Piange” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poet's Life and Work — A short biography of Eliot at The Poetry Foundation.

  • An Introduction to Modernism — A Poetry Foundation feature on the movement Eliot helped define.

  • The Poet's Love Life — An article about the complex romantic relationships that inspired Eliot's poems.

  • An Original Printing — See the poem as it originally appeared in Prufrock and Other Observations (1917).

  • The Poem Aloud — Listen to T. S. Eliot read "La Figlia Che Piange."

• LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

  • Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

  • Journey of the Magi

  • Morning at the Window

  • Portrait of a Lady

  • Preludes

  • Rhapsody on a Windy Night

  • The Hollow Men

  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  • The Waste Land