“Rhapsody on a Windy Night” is an early poem by T. S. Eliot. It was written in 1910 or 1911 when Eliot was living and studying in Paris. It was published in July 1915 in the magazine Blast and reprinted in Eliot’s first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. The poem is set in an unnamed city at night. The speaker walks the streets while the moon casts a spell that disrupts the linear world of clock time. As a result, many imagistic, fragmented, disconnected memories pop up in the speaker’s mind. The poem suggests that the speaker lives in a meaningless, even lifeless world that lacks joy, purpose, and connection. In that, it is typical of many of Eliot’s poems of this period.

The edition used in this study guide is from T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems: 1909-1962, Faber and Faber, 1963, rpr. 1974.

Poet Biography

Poet, dramatist, literary critic, and editor Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, though his family had roots in New England. After Eliot graduated from Smith Academy in St. Louis, he attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts. He entered Harvard in 1906 and received a BA in 1909 and an MA in English literature in 1910. He then studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, before returning to Harvard in 1911. It was during this period that he wrote “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” which would be published in 1915.

After World War I began in 1914, Eliot studied philosophy under a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, England. In June of the following year, his Modernist poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was published in Poetry magazine. Like other typical Modernist poems, it focuses on the speaker’s interiority and search for meaning. In 1917, it became the title poem in his first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, which also contained “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” At that time, Eliot had begun working for Lloyd’s Bank in London, a position he held until 1925. After that, he joined the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer. In 1929, when the firm became Faber and Faber, he became a director, a position he held until his death. As editor at Faber, he was responsible for advancing the careers of many young poets.

Eliot’s most famous poem, The Waste Land, was published in 1922. In densely symbolic and allusive verse, it describes the fragmentation and decay of Western culture. In the same year, Eliot founded the influential quarterly journal The Criterion, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1939.

Eliot was also a renowned literary critic. His collections of essays include The Sacred Wood (1920) and Homage to John Dryden (1924). As a critic, Eliot played an influential role as an arbiter of taste and excellence for both modern poetry and poetry of the past. He championed 17th-century English Metaphysical poets, whose work had been neglected for over two centuries. His Collected Essays appeared in 1932.

In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and joined the Anglican Church. His poems “Journey of the Magi” (1927) and “Ash Wednesday” (1930) were among the first poems written after his conversion. A decade and a half later, in 1944, Eliot published Four Quartets, which includes four poems and also explores spirituality, focusing on the intersection of time and eternity.

Eliot was also a dramatist. His best play is considered to be Murder in the Cathedral (1935), about the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. In 1949, Eliot achieved popular success with The Cocktail Party (1949), which ran for 409 performances on Broadway. Two later plays were The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Order of Merit by Britain’s King George VI as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915. After 1933, they lived apart but did not divorce. Haigh-Wood died in 1947. In 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, and they had eight years together before Eliot died on January 4, 1965, in London, of emphysema.

Poem Text

Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,

The street lamp sputtered,

The street lamp muttered,

The street lamp said, 'Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin.'

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

'Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter.'

So the hand of a child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,

And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back,

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

The lamp hummed:

'Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain.'

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,

'Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.'

The last twist of the knife.

Eliot, T. S. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” 1915. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The speaker walks through the streets of a city at night. Beginning at midnight, they walk under the light of the moon, the street illuminated by streetlamps. The things they see stimulate their memories, although the memories are fragmentary and without any obvious meaning.

At 1:30, they see a woman in an open doorway who may be a prostitute. The speaker notices that a corner of her eye is twisted, and this unleashes memories of twisted objects.

At 2:30, prompted by the glow of the streetlamp, the speaker sees a cat lapping up some putrid butter in the gutter. This also evokes memories; the speaker recalls a child picking up a toy and a crab in a pool hanging onto a stick.

At 3:30, the streetlamp tells the speaker to look up at the moon. The lamp personifies the moon as a woman who has lost both her power and her memory; her face looks as if she has had smallpox, and she neurotically holds a paper rose in her hand. She is conscious of various smells flitting across her brain. This prompts more memories for the speaker. They remember various lifeless things and a variety of smells emanating from different things and places.

At 4:00, the speaker reaches the door of their lodgings. Again, the streetlamp speaks to them, telling them that they have the key and should go inside and up the stairs. They must prepare for bed and sleep so that they can be ready for the next day. The speaker does not experience this as an encouragement, however, just as one more thing they have to endure.