Eliot's Notes to "The Waste Land" // 1.23

Lines 20-24:

...Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

Eliot's Note:

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

Citation:

Ecclesiastes 12:5, from the ESV translation of the Bible:

They are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets—

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