“Preludes” Introduction

• Read the full text of “Preludes”

“Preludes” Summary

“Preludes” Themes

• 

  Alienation and Urban Decay

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Nature of Time

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Preludes”

• Lines 1-4

  The winter evening settles down
  With smell of steaks in passageways.
  Six o’clock.
  The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 5-8

  And now a gusty shower wraps
  The grimy scraps
  Of withered leaves about your feet
  And newspapers from vacant lots;

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 9-13

  The showers beat
  On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
  And at the corner of the street
  A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
  And then the lighting of the lamps.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 14-18

  The morning comes to consciousness
  Of faint stale smells of beer
  From the sawdust-trampled street
  With all its muddy feet that press
  To early coffee-stands.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 19-23

  With the other masquerades
  That time resumes,
  One thinks of all the hands
  That are raising dingy shades
  In a thousand furnished rooms.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 24-29

  You tossed a blanket from the bed,
  You lay upon your back, and waited;
  You dozed, and watched the night revealing
  The thousand sordid images
  Of which your soul was constituted;
  They flickered against the ceiling.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 30-34

  And when all the world came back
  And the light crept up between the shutters
  And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
  You had such a vision of the street
  As the street hardly understands;

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 35-38

  Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
  You curled the papers from your hair,
  Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
  In the palms of both soiled hands.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 39-42

  His soul stretched tight across the skies
  That fade behind a city block,
  Or trampled by insistent feet
  At four and five and six o’clock;

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 43-47

  And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
  And evening newspapers, and eyes
  Assured of certain certainties,
  The conscience of a blackened street
  Impatient to assume the world.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 48-51

  I am moved by fancies that are curled
  Around these images, and cling:
  The notion of some infinitely gentle
  Infinitely suffering thing.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

• Lines 52-54

  Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
  The worlds revolve like ancient women
  Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺

“Preludes” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Personification

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Synecdoche

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Sibilance

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Allusion

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Metaphor

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Simile

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Assonance

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

• Caesura

  

  

  

  

  Unlock with LitCharts A⁺
  • See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

“Preludes” 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.

• Burnt-out ends
• Vacant lots
• Consciousness
• Masquerades
• Shades
• Sordid
• Vision
• Soiled
• Insistent
• Assured
• Conscience
• Assume
• Fancies
• Infinitely

• • See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Preludes”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Preludes” Speaker

“Preludes” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Preludes”

More “Preludes” Resources

• External Resources

  • "Preludes" Read Aloud — Listen to famous Shakespearean actor John Gielgud read "Preludes" aloud.

  • Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot — Read several essays by leading experts on Eliot, designed to introduce students to his work.

  • Lecture on Eliot's Auditory Imagination — Renowned scholar Christopher Ricks lectures on the importance of sound in Eliot's work. He plays a rare recording of Eliot reading "Preludes" at 27.08.

  • Biography of T.S. Eliot — Read a short biography of Eliot on Yale University's Modernism Lab, a website dedicated to the study of the early 20th century art movement.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot

  • Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

  • Journey of the Magi

  • La Figlia Che Piange

  • Morning at the Window

  • Portrait of a Lady

  • Rhapsody on a Windy Night

  • The Hollow Men

  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  • The Waste Land