“But though I have fasted, wept, and prayed, Though I have a seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here is no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. ”
— T. S. Eliot in The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)
“The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead.”
— W. H. Auden in As I walked out one evening (1937)
“O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.”