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“And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -
And this, and so much more? -”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Fault in Our Stars

“Let us roam then, you and I,
When the evening is splayed out across the sky
[...]
Paths that follow like a nagging accusation
Of a minor violation
To lead you to the ultimate reproof ...
Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!'
Let us go and prowl the city.

In the rooms the cats run to and fro
Auditioning for a Broadway show."

(From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)”
― Henry N. Beard, Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse

“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?'
Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed,
And give myself a bath before I'm fed --
(They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.')
My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur,
My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr --
(They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!')
Do I dare
Jump up on the table?
In an instant there is time
For excursions and inversions that will make me seem unstable."

(From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)”
― Henry N. Beard, Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse

“I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk along the beach.
I have the heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

(It's not the main point of the poem, but I am the third generation of my family who's never been able to eat a peach without wondering, do I dare and do I dare)”
― T.S. Eliot, Let Us Go Then, You and I

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,â€� whatever else it might be, seems to be an investigation into the possibility of durational being, which Bergson had described as “the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states.â€� The succession that Bergson opposes to vitality is the realm in which the morbid Prufrock tries to imagine speaking Andrew Marvell’s line, “Now let us sport us while we may,â€� but then falls back on his indecision, his failure to pose his overwhelming question, and his inability to sing his love. Prufrock’s problems are shown to be symptoms of the form of time in which desire for youth runs defiantly against the remorselessness of aging, snapping the present in two. The “silent seasâ€� that might bring relief from currents and countercurrents of time turn out to be like the troubling one that figures in Hamlet’s overwhelming question: “To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing end them.â€� Prufrock understands but is unable to admit the ontological force of the question: the “whips and scorns of timeâ€� that threaten to reverse all his “decisions and revisionsâ€� make him wish to be merely “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.â€� That synecdochic figure is as much an anachronous peripeteia for Prufrock as it is for Polonius when Hamlet taunts him: “you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backwards.”
― Charles M. Tung