Two Preludes

Song Cycle by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928 - 2016)

Word count: 115

1. The winter evening settles down [sung text not yet checked]

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
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.

Authorship

by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965), no title, appears in Preludes, no. 1 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

See other settings of this text.

Confirmed with The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot Faber and Faber, London and Boston 1969 p. 22

First published in Blast, July 1915

Research team for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]

2. The morning comes to consciousness [sung text not yet checked]

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.

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