Response to "Preludes"

      I read "Preludes" by T.S. Elliot, and I really enjoyed the words he used and the way it sounded. He portrayed a universal calm and gentle clarity. I think that he was talking about the early morning and the night, turning back into morning again. However, he didn't talk about the day. The author's language often would have the idea of emptiness, yet infinite people or things at the same time, or a movement from one to the other. For example, in the first stanza, he says "of withered leaves about your feet/And newspapers from vacant lots" but in the second stanza he says "One thinks of all the hands/that are raising dingy shades/In a thousand furnished rooms". From that I saw an empty outside yet a universal action going on within. The author also started by talking about a general empty street, and then in the third stanza he started talking in terms of "you". He had regular rhymes at the ends of some lines and some assonance, although not much assonance I could find. Things such as "bed's edge" or "street hardly". He used some alliteration, saying "certain certainties". This poem seemed to flow really nicely with its rhythm; it was easy to read and feel its movement. Also, he personified times and things such as morning or the street. There were certain descriptive lines I really liked. When he said "You dozed, and watched the night revealing/The thousand sordid images/Of which your soul was constituted". He created a person made of their memories and images, and I think there is a certain truth to that. I liked "His soul stretched tight across the skies". I saw a clear blue sky with the fading image of a person's face, like that one person was infinite in themselves. At the same time, they were lost in the sky.