Thomas Stearns Eliot
"Bad Land"
The action takes place in England after the First World War. The poem is based on the myth of the search for the Holy Grail and the legend of the poor fisherman. The parts of the poem are fragmentary and do not form a unity.
The poem begins with an epigraph - the myth of the Sibyl. She wished herself eternal life, forgetting to wish eternal youth: “I also saw the Cuma Sibyl in a bottle. The children asked her: “Sibyl, what do you want?”, And she answered: “I want to die.”
I part. Burial of the dead
The cruel month of April causes nature to wake up from its winter sleep: flowers and trees grow from the dead earth. It is raining in the city of Starnbergersee. Marie and her friend are sitting in a cafe and talking. Marie talks about how she went sledding in the mountains with her cousin.
In Part I, the Sibyl turns into the fortuneteller Madame Sozostris. She has a bad cold, but, nevertheless, makes a prediction on the cards to the person who came to her. He must die from the water: “Here,” she says, “here is your map - a drowned man, a Phoenician sailor ... / But I don’t see the Hanged Man. Your death by water."
The image of London - a ghost town where the war took place. The sailor calls his friend Stetson and asks him if the dead man who was buried in the garden a year ago sprouted: “Will he flourish this year - / Or maybe an unexpected frost struck his bed?” The sailor does not receive an answer.
II part. Game of chess
Husband and wife play chess complete silence waiting for a knock on the door. They have nothing to talk about with each other. The room is described: an aquarium without fish, a picture depicting the reincarnation of Philomela as a nightingale, scolded by a rapist king. Finally, Lil's friend comes in, and the hostess advises her that she should put herself in order by the arrival of her husband Albert from the front, insert her jaw, otherwise he will go to another:
Lil, rip it all out and make the inserts.
He said: I can't look at you.
And I can't, I say, think of Albert
He ditched three years in the trenches, he wants to live
Not with you, so there will be others.
Lil is 31 years old, she gave birth to five children, and in last time was near death. Albert returns on Sunday.
III part. fiery sermon
At night, a fisherman fishes from the banks of the Thames. He thinks of King Tireus, who dishonored Philomela.
Mr. Eugenides, the "one-eyed merchant" from Madame Sozostris' divination, invites a man to the Cannon Street Hotel.
In this part of the poem, the Sibyl is the female hypostasis of the blind soothsayer Tiresias:
I, Tiresias, the prophet, trembling between the sexes
A blind old man with shriveled female breasts.
In the purple hour I see how things are going
Having finished, people are drawn to the houses ...
Tiresias foresees a date between the typist and the sailor: he caresses her, she dispassionately endures his caresses. When the sailor leaves, the typist breathes a sigh of relief and turns on the gramophone. The typist recalls the facts of her biography. She was debauched at Richmond, at Moorgate, on Moorgate Beach.
The third part ends with a call to God to free the burning man from asceticism.
IV part. death by water
Phleb the Phoenician dies in the water after two weeks. His body is being swallowed by the sea current. The author calls on everyone to honor the deceased Phleb: "Remember Phleb: and he was full of strength and beauty."
V part. What did the thunder say
The last part of the poem begins with a description of the barren land: thunder in the dead mountains, there is no water here, only rocks, stones, sand underfoot, dry grass, cracks in the soil.
Someone else is walking next to the two heroes on the barren land. But they don't know him, they don't see his face. They hear thunder in the purple sky, see an incomprehensible city above the mountains, pass Jerusalem, Athens, ghostly London. They see an empty chapel with broken windows and a cemetery in the crevice of the rocks:
In this putrid hollow between the mountains
The grass sings in the faint light of the moon
To drooping graves near the chapel -
It's an empty chapel, home of the wind
The windows are broken, the door swings.
And only here the grass grows and it starts to rain.
And then the thunder says: “Yes. What did we give? - the blood of Jesus Christ, "the blood of a trembling heart", which no one will find. But many are looking for it, considering the blood of Jesus as the key to life.
The poem ends with the fisherman sitting by the canal, fishing and wondering if he will bring order to his lands and that London Bridge is collapsing. retold Lydia Patrusheva
The picture describes the actions after the First World War in England. The myth of the Holy Grail and the legend of the poor fisherman are taken as the basis. Parts of this poem have no connection with each other, being fragmentary. The poem itself is based on the myth of the Holy Grail. The story begins with the myth of the Sibyl, how she, being immortal, forgot to wish eternal youth, and in the end, having lived for centuries in the body of an old woman, she had one thing on her mind - how to die.
I part. Burial of the dead
It's spring outside. Nature wakes up after hibernation, the rains begin. Miri and a friend hid from the rain by sitting in a cafe small town Starnbergez. Sipping hot coffee, the girl talks about her vacation with her cousin.
The Sibyl in Part I turns into Sozostris. Being sick, she still tells fortunes on the cards to a man who has come to her. The cards say he will die from the water.
II part. Game of chess
The couple decided to pass the wait of the guests by playing chess. The game is silent, they can not find a topic for conversation. There is a knock, and Lil enters the room. She must put herself in order before her husband returns from the front.
III part. fiery sermon
Night. Thames. A fisherman sat on the shore. His thoughts about King Tireus, who deprived Philomela of honor.
Here the fortune-teller Sibyl plays the role of the hypostasis of the soothsayer Tiresias.
IV part. death by water
V part. What did the thunder say
The final part will tell about the barren land on which water does not run, underfoot there is only sand, dried grass, cracks in the ground, and around there are only mountains and thunder rumbles.
Three people walk across the barren land: two friends and one unknown person whom the heroes do not know and cannot see his face. Sounds of thunder are heard, an incomprehensible city falls into their field of view, they pass Athens, Jerusalem, London.
And the thunder says to them: “Yes. What did we give? - the blood of Jesus Christ, "the blood of a trembling heart."
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Interchangeable in "The Waste Land" and the scene, and characters. The past comes through here
in the present, the characters simultaneously exist both in the distant past and in the present, and are projected into the future. The dead come to life and, existing in various planes, places and configurations, make the narrative in need of decipherment.
"The Waste Land" combines the picture of life modern author Europe (that is, Europe in the 20s of the XX century) and the legendary Middle Ages (events associated with the guardians of the Holy Grail). The scene of the poem is at first an “unreal city” (part III, stanza 207), but later it becomes London, then Jerusalem, Alexandria, and finally Athens. By the end of the poem is depicted Central Europe, which turned into a rocky desert burned by the sun (V, 331 et seq.). Characters from mythology Ancient Greece, Rome, ancient east(Aeolus, Nausicaa, Polyphemus, Adonis, Osiris) live next to modern and ordinary people.
The discrepancy between the chronological sequence of events and the compositional order of the poetic narrative, the fragility of the boundaries of time and place of action in the poem "The Waste Land" was determined by criticism - not without reason - as a result of the influence of the philosophy of absolute idealists on Eliot late XIX century, but the issue was resolved unequivocally: everything was attributed to the notorious modernism. At the same time, although there is no reason to deny the influence of the philosophy of the school of T. Green, J. Royce and F. Bradley on Eliot, as already noted, the general conclusions from this fact are not as simple as it might seem at first. Both the relativity of time and place of action in The Waste Land, and the diversity of the characters of the poem, existing simultaneously in the past - moreover, its various periods - and in the present, should convey the universality and eternity of what the author seeks to express.
The poem is constantly changing and different people perform in different time and in different places. These transformations are declared by Eliot himself in the author's comment 1 and are intended to emphasize the relativity of their participation in one or another time.
In Part I of The Waste Land, the famous clairvoyant (Madame Sozostris), fortune-telling on Tapo cards, points out to the lyrical hero the image of a drowned Phoenician sailor (I, 47-48). In the next part of the poem ("The Game of Chess"), there is again a mention of the drowned Phoenician (II, 126-128). In the third part, the Phoenician appears - moreover, three times - as if he were alive, but he is already called Tiresias. Tiresias is both a decrepit old man, and a man, and a woman. He is both a demigod (and as such is immortal), and a common person perishing at sea. It merges different generations the living and the dead. A little further (III, 228) Tiresias already observes what is happening. In the IV part (“Death by water”), the dead Phoenician is again discussed.
The transformations that various characters of The Waste Land continuously undergo emphasize the conditionality of everything that is depicted, and at the same time the nonsense of being and the immutability of suffering on earth.
If lyrical hero in part I - a male person (albeit completely indefinite), then in part II (in the second episode) he is either a man, or a woman, or a friend, or friend, toothless Lil (II, 139-193). In part III, he is the merchant Tiresias, about whom we are talking in the comments. All the characters of the poem, whoever they are, merge into one in the image of a Man, and he is none other than the same Tiresias, Eliot uses the motive of the relativity of time to substantiate his idea about the universality of the fate of people who lived in different eras, V different countries and cities. The fragility of temporal and spatial concepts is emphasized by Eliot, who deliberately blurs the lines not only between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow, but also between the living and the inanimate, since the poet's task is to prove the universal futility, the dominance of death over everything. The crowd of people walking across London Bridge (in the first part of the poem) is perceived as a crowd of ghosts (stanza 63 et seq.), but, less obviously, even in the April birth of spring there is a breath of death.
In its structure, the poem is a continuous stream of visions, memories, mental states and imaginary pictures. They are built in such a way that they cover all time and all space, represent continuous transitions from one to another, not at all similar to the previous one. Only the image of death remains unchanged.
Sisters Dorothea and Celia, left without parents, lived in the house of their uncle-guardian Mr. Brook. The sisters were almost equally good-looking, but differed in character: Dorothea was serious and pious, Celia was sweet and moderately frivolous. Mr. Brooke's house was frequented by two gentlemen who had the express intention of soon offering Dorothea their hand and heart. One is a young baronet, Sir James Chettem; Dorothea opted for the latter, although at fifty he looked, as they used to say, gossips, on a dried mummy; the girl was inspired by the erudition and depth of mind of the reverend father, who was preparing to make the world happy with a multi-volume treatise in which he proved on vast material that all mythologies in the world are distortions of a single source given from above. To the formal proposal sent by Mr. Casaubon, Dorothea agreed the same day; a month and a half later they played a wedding, and the newlyweds went to Honeymoon to Rome, because Casaubon needed to work with the manuscripts in the Vatican library. Young Sir James, a little despondent, turned all his zeal to younger sister and soon she was called Mrs. Celia Chet-tem.
In Rome, Dorothea was disappointed: what she so admired in her husband, deep knowledge, more and more seemed to her a dead, cumbersome burden that did not bring to life either lofty joy or inspiration. Her only comfort was meeting Will Ladislaus, a poor distant relative of Mr. Casaubon, who was visiting Rome with an artist friend. Will, in his youth, had not yet chosen a career for himself, and lived on the money given to him by the grace of Dorothea's husband.
When the Caseubons returned to Middlemarch, main theme The talk in the city was the construction of a new hospital. The money for it was given by the banker Mr. Bulstrode, a stranger in Middlemarch, but already having a strong position thanks to his money, as well as his marriage, which connected him with the ties of property with the original Middlemarchs - the Vinces, the Garths, the Featherstones. The head of the hospital was Mr. Lydgate, a young doctor who had come to town from somewhere in the north; at first he was met with hostility by both colleagues and potential patients, who were suspicious of advanced medical theories Mr. Lydgate, but a little time passed, and among his patients were the most respected inhabitants.
So, it was Lydgate who was called when the fever with young Fred Vincey began. This young man, the son of wealthy, respected parents in Middlemarch, did not justify the hopes of the family: his father invested a lot of money in his education so that he could devote himself to the profession of a priest befitting a gentleman, but Fred was in no hurry to take the exam, preferring hunting and billiards to everything in the world. pleasant society of "life-burners". Such a pastime requires money, and therefore he got one very large debt.
Fred's illness did not threaten anything serious, but Mr. Lydgate regularly visited the patient, drawn to his bed partly by duty, partly by the desire to be in the company of Fred's sister, the charming blond Rosamond Vincey. Rosamond also had a liking for the promising, purposeful young man endowed with a pleasant appearance, intelligence and, as they said, some capital. Enjoying the presence of Rosamond, Lydgate completely forgot about her in the evenings of his studies and did not intend to marry in the next few years. Not the Rosamond. Already after the first meetings, she began to think about the atmosphere of the family home and about everything else that the bride is supposed to take care of. Seeing that Lydgate was powerless before her charms, Rosamond easily got her way, and soon the Lydgates were already living in a beautiful spacious house, exactly the same as the young one dreamed of.
So far everything has been going well for Rosamond, but the situation in which her brother has fallen cannot be called pleasant. Asking his father for money was out of the question, but Caleb Garth, the father of Mary, to whom Fred was deeply indifferent, acted as a surety for Fred out of kindness. Mr. Garth was a land surveyor and, as an honest and disinterested man, did not have significant funds, but he immediately agreed to pay Fred's debt, which doomed own family for deprivation. However, poverty and deprivation are not something that could seriously overshadow the life of the Garths.
Even the savings that Mary Garth made, being something of a housekeeper for a wealthy relative of the Garths and Vincey, old Featherstone, went to pay off the debt of a frivolous youth. In fact, Fred was counting on the inheritance of a rich uncle when issuing a bill, for he was almost sure that it was to him after the death of Featherstone that his land holdings would go. However, all Fred's hopes were in vain, as, indeed, were the hopes of numerous other relatives who flocked to the old man's deathbed. The deceased refused all the property to a certain unknown Joshua Rigg, his illegitimate son, who immediately hurried to sell the estate to Bulstrode and disappear from Middlemarch forever.
The years meanwhile were not kind to Mr. Casaubon either. He began to feel much worse, weakened, suffered from palpitations. In this position, the Reverend Father was especially irritated by the presence in his life with Dorothea of Will Ladislaus, who was clearly in love with Mrs. Casaubon; in the end, he even refused Will the house.
Will was just about ready to leave Middlemarch, where until then only affection for Dorothea had kept him, when the election campaign. This, it would seem, has nothing to do with life normal people circumstance played known role in the choice of a field not only by Will, but also by Fred Vincey. The fact is that Mr. Brooke intended to run for Parliament, and then it turned out that he had a lot of ill-wishers in the city and the county. In order to adequately respond to their attacks, an elderly gentleman bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers and invited Will Ladislav to the post of editor; enough others educated people not found in the city. The bulk of the attacks boiled down to the fact that Mr. Brooke is a worthless landowner, because the business on the farms belonging to him was put out of hand. In an effort to deprive the accusations of ill-wishers of grounds, Mr. Brooke invited Caleb Garth to be the manager. Several other landowners followed his example, so that the specter of poverty receded from the Garth family, but the affairs of his head became overwhelming. Mr. Caleb needed an assistant, and so he decided to make Fred, who was hanging around anyway.
Fred Vincey, meanwhile, was already seriously considering taking the priesthood, which would give him at least some kind of permanent income and the opportunity to gradually pay off the Garts. What stopped him, in addition to his own reluctance, was the reaction of Mary, with a fervor, in general, unusual for her, who declared that if he goes to such a profanity, she will stop all relations with him. Caleb Garth's offer came in very handy, and Fred, gladly accepting it, tried not to lose face.
Mr. Casaubon could not prevent Will's appointment, and seemed resigned to the fact that the young man remained in Middlemarch. As for Mr. Casaubon's health, it has by no means improved. During one of Dr. Lydgate's visits, the priest asked him to be as frank as possible, and Lydgate said that with such a heart disease he could live another fifteen years, or he could die suddenly and much earlier. After this conversation, Casaubon became even more thoughtful and finally set about organizing the materials collected for the book, designed to be the result of his whole life. However, the very next morning, Dorothea found husband dead on a bench in the garden. Casaubon left all his fortune to her, but at the end of the will they made a note that it was valid only if Dorothea did not marry Will Ladislav. Offensive in itself, this postscript, in addition, cast a shadow on impeccable reputation Mrs Casaubon. One way or another, Dorothea did not even think about remarriage, but directed all her strength and income to charitable activities in particular to help new hospital, where Lydgate ran the medical unit.
With Lydgate's practice, everything was in order, but family life did not develop. in the best way. Very soon it turned out that his vital interests had nothing to do with those of Rosamond, who talked about Lydgate leaving the hospital, where he applied advanced methods of treatment with enthusiasm and success, but completely free of charge, and, having moved to another place, start more profitable practice than he had at Middlemarch. The grief that they experienced when Rosamond had a miscarriage did not at all bring them together, and even more so the financial difficulties that are natural for a novice doctor when he lives on such a grand scale. Unexpected help came in the form of a check for a thousand pounds - just such a huge sum Lydgate needed to settle with creditors - offered by Bulstrode.
The banker became generous for a reason - he, a pious man in his own way, needed to do something to appease his conscience, awakened by a certain story. The story was reminded, not entirely disinterestedly, to Bulstrode by a man named Ruffles.
The fact is that Ruffles served in one enterprise that flourished thanks to not entirely legal operations, the co-owner, and then the sole owner of which Bulstrode was once. Bulstrode became the owner after the death of his senior partner, from whom he inherited not only the business, but also his wife. His wife's only daughter, Bulstrode's stepdaughter Sarah, ran away from home and became an actress. When Bulstrode was widowed, Sarah should have shared a huge capital with him, but they could not find her, and he got everything alone. There was one man who nevertheless found a fugitive, but he was generously paid to leave for America forever. Now Ruffles was back from there and wanted money. It remains to add that Sarah married the son of a Polish immigrant, Ladislav, and that they had a son, Will.
Bulstrode escorted Ruffles away, handing over the amount demanded by him, and Will, having told about everything, offered a fortune, but the young man, poor as he was, indignantly refused money acquired by dishonest means. Bulstrode had almost calmed down when Caleb Harth suddenly appeared to him and brought back the very sick Ruffles; it was clear from Garth that he had time to let him know about everything. Summoned by Bulstrode, Lydgate prescribed opium to the patient and left the banker and his housekeeper in charge. Going to bed, Bulstrode somehow forgot to tell the housekeeper how much opium to give the patient and she gave him the whole bottle to drink during the night, and in the morning Ruffles died.
Rumors spread around the city that Bulstrode purposely killed the patient, and Lydgate helped him in this, for which he received a thousand pounds. Both were subjected to severe obstruction, the end of which was only able to put an end to Dorothea, who believed the doctor and convinced many others of his innocence.
Dorothea herself, meanwhile, was becoming more and more imbued with tender feelings for Will, and finally an explanation took place: the young people decided to get married, despite the fact that Dorothea would lose the rights to Casaubon's money. Over time, Will became a figure prominent in political circles, but by no means a politician, Dorothea found herself as a wife and mother, for, with all the talents, in what other field could a woman prove herself at that time.
Fred and Mary, of course, also became husband and wife; they never got rich, but lived a long bright life, adorned with the birth of three glorious sons.
Lydgate died at the age of fifty in one of the fashionable resorts where he lived, specializing in gout, a disease of the rich, to the delight of Rosamond.
American-English poet, playwright and literary critic, representative of modernism in poetry.
Was born September 26 1888 in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) in a wealthy family, whose ancestors were from England.
Having finished private school, Thomas Eliot 1906 entered Harvard University. He began to write his first poems under the influence of Omar Khayyam at the age of 14. Carried away by the poetry of the Symbolists, he came to Paris, where he continued his studies at the Sorbonne.
Returning to America in 1911, he began work on a dissertation on the work of Bradley, without finishing which he first moved to Germany, and then in 1915 to London.
In 1915 he married the ballerina Vivienne Haywood, but it soon became clear that she was suffering from a mental disorder.
From 1917 to 1919 Mr. Eliot is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of The Egoist magazine and publishes his own poetry in various periodicals and publishes several poetry collections. The first significant poem by Thomas Eliot was J. Alfred Prufrock's Love Song. It was a new milestone in the poetry of the XX century, a round of modern English poetry.
Thomas Eliot becomes popular poet, serious literary critic. His critical essays begin the so-called "Cambridge School of Criticism".
1922 was published, according to critics, the best work Eliot, which reflected the intellectual mood whole era, - the poem "The Waste Land".
In 1927 Eliot converted to Anglicanism and became a British citizen. His reflections on religion were reflected in the poem Ash Wednesday (1930), which was written in a more traditional style than his earlier works.
In 1932 after a twenty-year break, he visited America. IN 1934divorced his wife.
In 1934, Eliot wrote the poetic drama "Stone", and in 1935 - the drama "Murder in the Cathedral", staged at the same time in Canterbury Cathedral. His plays about modern life- "Family Reunion" (1939), "Cocktail Party" (1950) and others - are considered less successful.
1940 Thomas Eliot writes the poem "East Cocker", then he is published in a row poetic works who are considered the most mature.
In 1948 Eliot was awarded Nobel Prize in literature "for priority innovation in the development modern poetry". In 1948 he was awarded the British Order of Merit, in 1954 - the French Legion of Honor and the German Goethe Prize of the Hanseatic League.
From 1952 until his death he was President of the London Library.
In 1957, at the age of 68, he married his former secretary, Valerie Fletcher.
Died January 4, 1965 in London at the age of 76 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Eliot D. The Waste Land.
The action takes place in England after the First World War. The poem is based on the myth of the search for the Holy Grail and the legend of the poor fisherman. The parts of the poem are fragmentary and do not form a unity.
The poem begins with an epigraph - the myth of the Sibyl. She wished herself eternal life, forgetting to wish eternal youth: “I also saw the Cuma Sibyl in a bottle. Her children asked: “Sibyl, what do you want?”, And she answered: “I want to die.”
I part. Burial of the dead
The cruel month of April causes nature to wake up from its winter sleep: flowers and trees grow from the dead earth. It is raining in Starnbergersee. Marie and her friend are sitting in a cafe and talking. Marie talks about how she went sledding in the mountains with her cousin.
The author calls the son of man to come where the dead tree does not give shade. He promises to show fear - a handful of dust.
In Part I, the Sibyl turns into the fortuneteller Madame Sozostris. She has a bad cold, but, nevertheless, makes a prediction on the cards to the person who came to her. He must die from water: "Here," she says, "here is your map - a drowned man, a Phoenician sailor. But I do not see the Hanged Man. Your death is from water."
The image of London - a ghost town where the war took place. The sailor calls his friend Stetson and asks him if the dead man who was buried in the garden a year ago sprouted: "Will he flourish this year - Or maybe an unexpected frost hit his bed?" The sailor does not receive an answer.
II part. Game of chess
The couple play chess in complete silence, waiting for a knock on the door. They have nothing to talk about with each other. The room is described: an aquarium without fish, a picture depicting the reincarnation of Philomela as a nightingale, scolded by a rapist king. Finally, Lil's friend comes in, and the hostess advises her that by the time her husband Albert arrives from the front, she should put herself in order, put her jaw in, otherwise he will go to another:
Lil, rip it all out and make the inserts.
He said: I can't look at you.
And I can't, I say, think of Albert
He ditched three years in the trenches, he wants to live
Not with you, so there will be others.
Lil is 31 years old, she gave birth to five children, and the last time she was near death. Albert returns on Sunday.
III part. Fire sermon.
At night, a fisherman fishes from the banks of the Thames. He thinks of King Tireus, who dishonored Philomela.
Mr. Eugenides - the "one-eyed merchant" from the divination of Madame Sozostris - invites a man to the Cannon Street Hotel.
In this part of the poem, the Sibyl is the female hypostasis of the blind soothsayer Tiresias: "I, Tiresias, the prophet, trembling between the sexes, A blind old man with a shriveled female breast. In the purple hour, I see how people are drawn to their houses. Tiresias foresees a date between the typist and the sailor: he caresses her, she dispassionately endures his caresses. When the sailor leaves, the typist breathes a sigh of relief and turns on the gramophone. The typist recalls the facts of her biography. She was debauched at Richmond, at Moorgate, on Moorgate Beach. The third part ends with a call to God to free the burning man from asceticism. IV part. Death by water. Phleb the Phoenician dies in the water after two weeks. His body is being swallowed by the sea current. The author urges everyone to honor the deceased Phleb: "Remember Phleb: and he was full of strength and beauty." V part. What did the thunder say? The last part of the poem begins with a description of the barren land: thunder in the dead mountains, there is no water here, only rocks, stones, sand underfoot, dry grass, cracks in the soil. Someone else is walking next to the two heroes on the barren land. But they don't know him, they don't see his face. They hear thunder in the purple sky, see an incomprehensible city above the mountains, pass Jerusalem, Athens, ghostly London. In the crevice of the rocks they see an empty chapel with broken windows and a cemetery: In this putrid hollow between the mountains Grass sings in the faint light of the moon To the drooping graves near the chapel - This is an empty chapel, the dwelling of the wind, The windows are broken, the door swings. And only here the grass grows and it starts to rain. And then the thunder says: "Yes. What did we give?" - the blood of Jesus Christ, "the blood of a trembling heart", which no one will find. But many are looking for it, considering the blood of Jesus as the key to life. The poem ends with the fisherman sitting by the canal, fishing and wondering if he will bring order to his lands and that London Bridge is collapsing.
