"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot . Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse at the instigation of Ezra Pound . It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet titled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. At the time of its publication, Prufrock was considered outlandish, but is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic cultural shift from late 19th-century Romantic verse and Georgian lyrics to Modernism.
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: 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 upon the beach.
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
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: Selected Poems
“In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.”
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
