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.

About the headline (FAQ)

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

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]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

• by Stanley Grill (b. 1953), "Prelude I", copyright © 1978 [soprano, violin and cello], from Preludes, no. 1, confirmed with an online score [ sung text verified 1 time]
• by Wayne Peterson (b. 1927), "Prelude I", 1954. [soprano or tenor and piano] [ sung text not verified ]
• by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928 - 2016), "The winter evening settles down", published 1967 [TT(T)BB(B) chorus a cappella], from Two Preludes, no. 1. [ sung text not verified ]
• by Howard Swanson (1907 - 1978), "The winter evening settles down", published 1952 [medium voice and piano], from 4 Preludes, no. 1. [ sung text not verified ]

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

This text was added to the website: 2009-04-24
Line count: 13
Word count: 67