{
 "id": "t-s-eliot/gerontion",
 "title": "Gerontion",
 "poet": "T. S. Eliot",
 "poet_slug": "t-s-eliot",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems",
 "book_slug": "poems-1920",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": "Thou hast nor youth nor age / But as it were an after dinner sleep / Dreaming of both.",
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "Poems (1920)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poems19091925030616mbp"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/t-s-eliot_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1567",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009592742",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1321",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001835100",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100218549",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems19091925030616mbp",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedpoems1900elio",
   "https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200705",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswritteninea00elio",
   "https://theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 75,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 63,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Here I am, an old man in a dry month,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was neither at the hot gates",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor fought in the warm rain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bitten by flies, fought.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My house is a decayed house,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I an old man,",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   },
   {
    "text": "A dull head among windy spaces.",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The word within a word, unable to speak a word,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came Christ the tiger",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With caressing hands, at Limoges",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who walked all night in the next room;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An old man in a draughty house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under a windy knob.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Guides us by vanities. Think now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She gives when our attention is distracted",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What’s not believed in, or if still believed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We have not reached conclusion, when I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have not made this show purposelessly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And it is not by any concitation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the backward devils.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would meet you upon this honestly.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I that was near your heart was removed therefrom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since what is kept must be adulterated?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How should I use them for your closer contact?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "These with a thousand small deliberations",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With pungent sauces, multiply variety",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Suspend its operations, will the weevil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And an old man driven by the Trades",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a sleepy corner.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Tenants of the house,",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   },
   {
    "text": "Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.",
    "indent": 0,
    "align": "right"
   }
  ]
 ]
}