Dear all,

Read the poem "Virginia" by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) written in 1934.

Red river, red river,
Slow heat is silence
No will is it still a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river, river, river





T.S. Eliot was born in the USA but at the the age of 25 went to live in London, and at 35 became a British citizen. He worked as a bank clerk and later became an editor for the publishing house Faber. During World War II, he served as an air-raid warden. His influence on the next generations of English poets was enormous. One of his most well known poems is "The Waste land" written in 1922, in which he complains about the lack of meaning of contemporary city life. In one of his essays about poetry "The music of poetry" 1942, he wrote: "It is not necessary in order to enjoy the poem, to know what the dream means; but human beings have an unshakeable belief that dreams mean something..."

What do you think?
Claudia