Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in St Louis in 1888 TS Eliot was born. He wrote many poems, most famous perhaps "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" - and of course "The Hollow Men", which begins "We are the hollow men" and ends

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

He also wrote the source poems for "Cats". And many others, including this (The Weeping Girl):

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo...

STAND on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

More of his poems here