LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,143)
  • Text Authors (19,560)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965)

His soul stretched tight across the...
Language: English 
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;
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.

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

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

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot Faber and Faber, London and Boston 1969 p. 23

First published in Blast, July 1915

Text Authorship:

  • by T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888 - 1965), no title, appears in Preludes, no. 4 [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 IV", copyright © 1978 [soprano, violin and cello], from Preludes, no. 4, confirmed with an online score [ sung text verified 1 time]
  • by Howard Swanson (1907 - 1978), "His soul stretched tight across the skies", published 1952 [medium voice and piano], from 4 Preludes, no. 4. [ 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: 16
Word count: 92

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris