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==Title: "The Burial of the Dead"==
Title inspired by the [[Order for the Burial of the Dead]], which was the burial service for the 

church of England.  Because of World War I, this was probably one of the rituals most in use 

during this period, sadly.  The title conveys a sense of mourning, or an overall pessimism.

Further, the fabric of the service lends threads of man's downfall and lack of generation to "The Waste Land" as a whole.

== Stanza 1 ==

===Lines 1-4, Geoffrey Chaucer===


  
    April is the cruellest month, breeding
    Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
    Memory and desire, stirring
    Dull roots with spring rain.

The beginning of this section is often described by scholars as an inversion of the beginning of the prologue to Chaucer's [[''The Canterbury Tales'']].

===Lines 5-7, James Thomson===

    
    Winter kept us warm, covering
    Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
    A little life with dried tubers.

This section was perhaps inspired by [["To Our Ladies of Death"]] by James Thomson:
::::  "Our Mother feedeth thus our little life,
::::  That we in turn may feed her with our death"

===Lines 8-11, Germany===
    

    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,                                   10
    And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

"Starnbergersee," also known as Lake Starnberger, is approximately nine miles from Munich, which Eliot visited in 1911. 

The "Hofgarten" is the court garden, the heart of Munich, and the ruling house of Bavaria--a center of royal European activity. 

===Line 12, Bavarian Nobility===
    
    ''Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.''

Translation: "I am not a Russian, I come from Lithuania, a real German."  

This alludes to the beginnings of a national, and perhaps racial, identity for Europeans, which possibly also includes the loss of a greater, perhaps more valuable, cohesive European quality.

===Lines 13-18===
    
    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.


The speaker, Countess Marie Larisch, was the illegitimate daughter of Ludwig Wilhelm, heir to the throne of Bavaria, and a common woman.  She may represent the "degradation" of European high culture that concerns Eliot, especially considering that her father Wilhelm renounced the throne in order to marry her mother.  

This makes her cousin the Archduke Rudolf, whom she helped to conceal his affair.  This draws in issues of fertility, legitimacy, betrayal, and deception.  

Valerie Eliot maintained that this excerpt of Larisch's speech came not from her biography, ''My Past'', as many supposed, but actually came directly from a conversation that T.S. Eliot had with Larisch.   

== Stanza 2 ==

===Lines 19-30, Biblical Rhetoric===

    What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
    Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,                                  20
    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.                              30

Some of the language is perhaps borrowed directly from the Bible.  

::'''[[Job 8]]'''

::::'''Lines 19-20''' "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?"

::::'''Job 8:16-17''' "His roots are wrapped about the heap and seeketh the place of stones."



::'''[[Ezekiel 2]]'''

::::'''Line 20''' "...son of man"

::::'''Ezekiel 2''' God calls Ezekiel the son of man and promises him the gift of prophecy if he will "stand upon thy feet" or, be brave 

::::enough to dare to listen, but when Ezekiel hears God's message, it is only one of woe.



::'''[[Ezekiel 6]]'''

::::'''Line 22''' "...a heap of broken images"

::::'''Ezekiel 6''' God threatens to break the idols and images of idols in his wrath.  This section also begins to speak to the social ills of adultery, which will be a theme of the next section of Eliot's work.  



::'''[[Ecclesiastes 12]]'''

::::'''Line 23''' "And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief"

::::'''Ecclesiastes''' 12:5 refers to the time in ones old age, known as the "evil days" when desire fails, and even grasshoppers are a burden.  If you think back to the beginning of "The Burial of the Dead" ("mixing memory and desire") 

::::this is particularly relevant.  This chapter of Ecclesiastes also speaks about mourners in the streets, an image familiar to the end of "The Burial of the Dead."  Further, the teacher of scripture insists that everything on earth is 

::::meaningless, reflecting the general post-war apathy of Europe.


::'''[[Isaiah 2]]''' vs. '''[[Isaiah 32]]'''

::::'''Line 25-26''' "There is a shadow under this red rock,/ Come in under the shadow of this red rock"

::::Is the rock a shelter (Isaiah 2), or a hiding place (Isaiah 32)?  Is it a place to hide from the Waste Land, a place of salvation, or a place of fear?  Further, one must go under the rock either because the Lord is humbling man for his 
::::arrogance, or else is the "rock" a messiah, or Fisher King character that will bring the people out of the darkness.  Further, the latter half of Isaiah 32 blames female complacency for the barrenness of the land, perhaps alluding to the complacency of post-war women and their failure to rejuvenate the veterans returning home, thus dooming Europe.


However, line 30 relates back to the epigraph, where a handful of dust, or sand, dooms Sybil to an extremely long life, but one barren of beauty and pleasure.  It also brings to mind "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," alluding to man's 
mortality.

===Lines 31-34===

            ''Frisch weht der Wind''
            ''Der Heimat zu''
            ''Mein Irisch Kind,''
            ''Wo weilest du?''

'''Translation''' 

::::::::Fresh blows the wind
::::::::To my homeland
::::::::My Irish child
::::::::Where are you tarrying?


This comes from the Wagner opera ''Tristan and Isolde'' (1865).  A sailor sings a song about an Irish woman left behind, as they sail Isolde from Cornwall to Ireland to marry King Mark.  This is also a foreshadowing of Isolde's failure later in the opera to come to Tristan's aid, when he dies waiting for her to come and magically heal him.  Again, it is the failure of woman to rejuvenate men that ends in tragedy.

===Lines 35-36===


    "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
      They called me the hyacinth girl."


Hyacinth was a companion of Apollo that was killed by Apollo's stray discus.  Hyacinth's blood miraculously generated a flower, which Apollo inscribed with his grief, explaining the patterning of the flower which seems to say "ai" the traditional Greek expression of grief.  Apollo, the representative of high culture and prophecy, betrays his adherent, representing the cultural dilemma that concerns Eliot--that high culture has left Europe.

===Lines 37-41===

    - 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,                                    40
    Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

===Line 42===

    ''Od' und leer das Meer.''

== Stanza 3 ==

===Lines 43-48===

    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!)

===Lines 49-50===
    
    Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
    The lady of situations.                                                 50

===Lines 51-55===

    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.

===Line 56===

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


===Lines 57-59===

    Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
    Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
    One must be so careful these days.

== Stanza 4 ==



===Lines 60-63===
   
    Unreal City,                                                            60
    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.

===Lines 64-65===

    Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
    And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

===Lines 66-68===

    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.

===Lines 69-76===

    There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
    "You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!                            70
    "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 frere''!"


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