Poem by Thomas Stearns Eliot

Conversation Galante

I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress."
  She then: "How you digress!"

And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our vacuity."
  She then: "Does this refer to me?"
  "Oh no, it is I who am inane."

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—"
  And—"Are we then so serious?"

1. Lune de Miel
2. Cousin Nancy
3. Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
4. Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
5. The Hippopotamus

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