Here's part of an allusive poem by T.S Eliot. It is only a part of the whole poem. It was memorized, most probably in part to win the hearts of young maidens during the thirties and fourties. Apperently, with great success. It really goes to show how far we have regressed.

 

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

April is the cruellest month, breeding

  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

  Memory and desire, stirring

  Dull roots with spring rain.

  Winter kept us warm, covering  

       

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding  

A little life with dried tubers.

  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee  

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

  And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

   And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

  Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

  And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,

  My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,

  And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

   Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

  In the mountains, there you feel free.

  I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

    What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

   You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

  And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

  There is shadow under this red rock,

  (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  

And I will show you something different from either  

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

  Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                  Frisch weht der Wind                   Der Heimat zu.                   Mein Irisch Kind,                   Wo weilest du?   'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

   'They called me the hyacinth girl.'

  Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

  Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

  Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

   Looking into the heart of light, the silence.  

Od' und leer das Meer.

    Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

  Had a bad cold, nevertheless

  Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

  Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

  (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

  Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

  The lady of situations.

   Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

  And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

  Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,  

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

  The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

 I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

  Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

  Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

  One must be so careful these days.  

  Unreal City,

  Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

  A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

  I had not thought death had undone so many.

  Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

  And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

 Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

  To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

  With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.  

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!

  'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

  'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

  'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

  'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

  'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,

  'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!

  'You! hypocrite lecteur!mon semblable,mon frère!'  

  II. A GAME OF CHESS

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

  Glowed on the marble, where the glass

  Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

  From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

  (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

  Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

  Reflecting light upon the table as

  The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

  From satin cases poured in rich profusion;

  In vials of ivory and coloured glass  

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

  Unguent, powdered, or liquidtroubled, confused

  And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

  That freshened from the window, these ascended

  In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,  

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

  Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

  Huge sea-wood fed with copper  

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

  In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.

  Above the antique mantel was displayed  

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

  The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king  

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

  Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

  And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

  'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.

  And other withered stumps of time

  Were told upon the walls; staring forms

 Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.  

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

  Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

  Spread out in fiery points

  Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

  'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

  'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

  'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

  'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

    I think we are in rats' alley

  Where the dead men lost their bones.