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Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

Cousin Nancy


              1Miss Nancy Ellicott
              2Strode across the hills and broke them,
              3Rode across the hills and broke them --
              4The barren New England hills --
              5Riding to hounds
              6Over the cow-pasture.

              7Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
              8And danced all the modern dances;
              9And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
            10But they knew that it was modern.

            11Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
            12Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
            13The army of unalterable law.

Notes

12] Matthew and Waldo: Matthew Arnold (1822-88) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82).

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
© T.S. Eliot and Faber and Faber Ltd 1974
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (London: The Egoist, 1917): 34. E546 P784 1917 Fisher Rare Book Library. Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (London: Faber and Faber, 1969): A1.
First publication date: October 1915
Publication date note: Published in Poetry (October 1915)
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/28

Rhyme: unrhyming

Other poems by Thomas Stearns Eliot

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