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. Lines for an Old Man
2. Lune de Miel
3. Hysteria
4. Sweeney Erect
5. Sweeney Among the Nightingales

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