• We are the hollow men
• We are the stuffed men
• Leaning together
• Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
• Our dried voices, when
• We whispered together
• Are quiet and meaningless
• As wind in dry grass
• Or rats' feet over broken glass
• In our dry cellar
• Shape without form, shade without colour,
• Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
• Those who have crossed
• With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
• Remember us - if at all - not as lost
• Violent souls, but only
• As the hollow men
• The stuffed men.
• II
• Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
• In death's dream kingdom
• These do not appear:
• There, the eyes are
• Sunlight on a broken column
• There, is a tree swinging
• And voices are
• In the wind's singing
• More distant and more solemn
• Than a fading star.

• Let me be no nearer
• In death's dream kingdom
• Let me also wear
• Such deliberate disguises
• Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
• In a field
• Behaving as the wind behaves
• No nearer-
• Not that final meeting
• In the twilight kingdom
• III
• This is the dead land
• This is cactus land
• Here the stone images
• Are raised, here they receive
• The supplication of a dead man's hand
• Under the twinkle of a fading star.
• Is it like this
• In death's other kingdom
• Waking alone
• At the hour when we are
• Trembling with tenderness
• Lips that would kiss
• Form prayers to broken stone.
• IV
• The eyes are not here
• There are no eyes here
• In the valley of dying stars
• In this hollow valley
• This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
• In this last of meeting places
• We grope together
• And avoid speech
• Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

• Sightless, unless
• The eyes reappear
• As the perpetual star
• Multifoliate rose
• Of death's twilight kingdom
• The hope only
• Of empty men.
• V
• Here we go round the prickly pear
• Prickly pear prickly pear
• Here we go round the prickly pear
• At five o'clock in the morning.
• Between the idea
• And the reality
• Between the motion
• And the act
• Falls the Shadow
• For thine is the Kingdom
• Between the conception
• And the creation
• Between the emotion
• And the response
• Falls the Shadow
• Life is very long
• Between the desire
• And the spasm
• Between the potency
• And the existence
• Between the essence
• And the descent
• Falls the Shadow
• For thine is the Kingdom
• For thine is
• Life is
• For thine is the
• This is the way the world ends
• This is the way the world ends
• This is the way the world ends
• Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

by T.S. Eliot