by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965)
You tossed a blanket from the bed
Language: English
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. 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; 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.
About the headline (FAQ)
Confirmed with The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot Faber and Faber, London and Boston 1969 pp. 22-23
First published in Blast, July 1915Authorship:
- by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965), no title, appears in Preludes, no. 3 [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 III", copyright © 1978 [soprano, violin and cello], from Preludes, no. 3, confirmed with an online score [ sung text verified 1 time]
- by Howard Swanson (1907 - 1978), "You tossed a blanket from the bed", published 1952 [medium voice and piano], from 4 Preludes, no. 3. [ sung text not verified ]
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2009-04-24
Line count: 15
Word count: 99