| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself)
to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble.
To another work of anthropo-logy I am indebted in general, one which has
influenced our generation profoundly; I mean _The Golden Bough_; I have
used especially the two volumes _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_. Anyone who is
acquainted with these works will immediately recognize in the poem
certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
<1> Macmillan] Cambridge.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel 2:7.
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: very vividly with the home-staying types of the ministries of the
various British churches. I met and talked to several. Near
Frise there were some barge gunboats--they have since taken their
place in the fighting, but then they were a surprise--and the men
had been very anxious to have their craft visited and seen. The
priest who came after our party to see if he could still arrange
that, had been decorated for gallantry. Of course the English
too have their gallant chaplains, but they are men of the officer
caste, they are just young officers with peculiar collars; not
men among men, as are the French priests.
There can be no doubt that the behaviour of the French priests in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: of the men was engaged about the cooking fire, which burned
with the clear, fierce, essential radiance of cocoanut shells. A
fragrance of strange meats was in the air. All round in the
verandahs lamps were lighted, so that the place shone abroad
in the dusk of the trees with many complicated patterns of
shadow.
'Come and wash your hands,' said Attwater, and led the way
into a clean, matted room with a cot bed, a safe, or shelf or
two of books in a glazed case, and an iron washing-stand.
Presently he cried in the native, and there appeared for a moment
in the doorway a plump and pretty young woman with a clean
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