Chaucer Handout

English 203

Dr. Fike

 

 

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

[I'm not a Russian at all--I come from Lithuania, genuinely German.]

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened.  He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight.  And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 

--T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

 

 

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

The* small rain down can rain?                                     * (so that) The small rain…

Christ, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again!

 

--Medieval lyric, author unknown