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The section "Occasional Verses" from T.S. Eliot's Complete Poems: 1909-1962 collects the following poems:

� "Defence of the Islands"
� "A Note on War Poetry"
� "To the Indians who Died in Africa"
� "To Walter de la Mare"
� "A Dedication to my Wife"

And they're pretty damn good. These poems are some of Eliot's last poetic work—mostly from the 1940s—and it shows. They feel a lot more mature than his earlier poems.

On the first of these occasional verses, Eliot says: "'Defence of the Islands' cannot pretend to be verse, but its date—just after the evacuation from Dunkirk—and occasion have for me a significance which makes me wish to preserve it. McKnight Kauffer was then working for the Ministry of Information. At his request I wrote these lines to accompany an exhibition in New York of photographs illustrating the war effort of Britain. They were subsequently published in Britain At War (the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1941). I now dedicate them to the memory of Edward McKnight Kauffer." Eliot writes of calls that battle "man's newest form of gamble with death" in that poem—a phrase which rings true and is still relevant today.

"A Note on War Poetry" was written at the request of Miss Storm Jameson� to be included in a book entitled London Calling (Harper Brothers, New York, 1942). My favorite line goes as follows: "War is not a life: it is a situation, / One which may neither be ignored nor accepted, / A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem, / Enveloped or scattered."

"To the Indians who Died in Africa" was written at the request of Miss Cornelia Sorabji for Queen Mary's Book for India (Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1943). Eliot dedicated it to Bonamy Dobree, "because he liked it and urged me to preserve it." In it, Eliot writes: "A man’s destination is not his destiny / Every country is home to one man / And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely / At one with his destiny, that soil is his."

"To Walter de la Mare" was written for inclusion in Tribute to Walter de la Mare (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1948), a book presented to him on his seventy-fifth birthday. Walter John de la Mare (1873-1956) was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for his psychological horror short fiction, including "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows".

"A Dedication to my Wife" opens with the following beautiful lines: "To whom I owe the leaping delight / That quickens my senses in our wakingtime"—umm, excuse me?? How romantic and sensual is that? WTF, Thomas Stearns??? In the poem, he also talks "Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other"—so he really wanted to let us know that he be fucking—which is particularly juicy bc he had such a strained sexual relationship with his first wife (these two were definitely not fucking...). [In case you didn't know, Eliot was first married to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, from 1915 to 1947, and then to Valerie Eliot, from 1957 to his death. So it's kinda giving Maroon 5 "This Love" vibes, if ya know what I mean.]