hope deferred no more

It is a poem saturated with allusion, the most immediate being Aeschylus: the epigraph is Agamemnon's line "Alas, I am struck deep with a mortal blow." Is T. S. Eliot trying to say we too deserve that fate, slippery silver bathtub walls our final bed? The prevalent animals are also a curious feature: ape, zebra, giraffe, dog, nightingale, and murderous paws.

SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES

ώμοι, πέπληγμαι καιρίαν πληγήν έσω.

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog,
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees

Slips and pulls the table-cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrae in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovich
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid droppings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

            — T. S. Eliot