Words Intended for Songs

Your Song
Elton John

It's a little bit funny this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide
I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live

If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song
It's for people like you that keep it turned on

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

When I read, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I saw that there were a lot of allusions that took place regarding other text that I had read before. I also noticed that this poem has a lot of similarities with Elton John’s song, Your Song, as well as it also has many differences.

As I read the poem, I went on the internet to look for the translation of the preamble that this poem has in Italian. When I found it I realized that it was actually part of Dante’s Inferno. This segment can be found in Canto XXVII lines 61-66,

"If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you.”

This relates to the poem because here the person who is in hell knows that nobody will ever return to the world after being in the inferno, and therefore he shall never speak up what he knows. The relationship between this and Elliot’s poem is that Alfred never tells the reader about his true feelings. This is very different from Elton John’s son because in this musical piece he does express his feelings to the person he has dedicated this song to.

“It's a little bit funny this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide...
How wonderful life is while you're in the world”(1..13)

In those parts of the song it is logical that the narrator is expressing his feelings completely. He is not hiding hi emotions and he isn’t keeping anything to himself as Alfred is doing in his song.

Alfred seems to be talking to another person may it be the reader or the woman to whom he is dedicating this song to. I would also interpret it as an inner conversation inside his brain, were he debates weather or not to declare his feelings. He wants to ask an important question. I personally would say that he wants to ask a woman’s hand in marriage because of the context.

“LET us go then, you and I,”(1)
“To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’”(10)

In the song, Your Song, the narrator is directing these lyrics to another person and he is definitely not afraid to speak his mind. This song is being dedicated to another person. This is not as secret, like it is to Alfred, and he wants everybody else to know.

“And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world”(9-13)

Here we can see that there is no fear whatsoever in the words because they are being exposed to everybody and it is obvious that they are meant to express love.

Although this two songs have a lot of differences, they also have some similarities like the use of a frustrated tone and the impotence of the individual to do some things on its own. There are certain barriers that keep the narrators from telling the reader what they want to say at times. In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock is very reserved and he avoids expressing his feelings because of his frustration and fear. I would say that he is an old man due to the fact that he mentions so much that he is growing bold and thin, and that he has already lived everything.” I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”(120) He has very low self esteem and he knows he has too little to offer.

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe...
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”(83)

In Your Song, the narrator also shows that he has very few to offer and that he is also frustrated with his situation. But, differently from Alfred, he still has the courage to declare his love to that person and to offer them everything they posses, although it’s very little.

“I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live
If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you” (3-9)

Both of these songs have the same inconsistency in meter. They have different number of syllables in each line which vary within each stanza. This represents the inconsistency of the life of the narrators, and how they have so many problems. This shows that their life is completely unstable.

These songs also have a very big difference which consists of them not following similar rhyme schemes. Your Song, has a scheme that follows the pattern of ABAB, while other song has schemes such as AABCCDDEEFGG in one stanza, and then AABBCDCEFE on another, changing all the time. This also shows inconsistency in Alfred’s life as well as it emphasizes on certain ideas when the scheme is broken between stanzas. This gives more importance to the lines that don’t rhyme to the rest of the stanza.

“Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”(18)

Finally I can say that both of the poems have an accent that is consistent. This is iambic. When it accents every other syllable, the author is giving that text a voice and a rhythm that will keep the reader intrigued and interested in the lyrics. Writers seem to implement the use of iambic a lot in their texts, probably because of those reasons.

Corrections # 2

1. Billy, the character he has created has created

Omit the he which is incorrect because the subject has already been mentioned with its proper name.

2. servant is recalls fraise servant recalls a fraise

This part of the segment has wrong wording because it doesn’t make sense. When referring to the servant who recalls a fraise it is wrong to put “servant is” due to the fact that there can’t be two nouns next to each other. Is and recalls are both nouns.

3. hi own race his own race

In this part of the sentence I was referring to a subject, and therefore “his” was the correct word to use. Hi was an incomplete form of this word.

4. baring antiwar book boring antiwar book

I meant to say that I thought it was a boring book, not baring. This was probably changed by the computer

A Limbo of Hollows: The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men is a poem that talks about death and about its different stages. When I first read the poem it was a little confusing because I wasn’t very sure weather that it was talking about spirits or humans. As I read the text for a second time, I realized that the whole poem was actually an allusion to the stage that comes after death, such as a state of limbo. The descriptions that I saw in this poem were very similar to those in Dante’s Inferno as well.
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men” (1-2)

As I read these lines, there were certain things that popped into my head. The first connection that I was able to do, was the one were I observed that the “hollow men” could be actually spirits, because they are empty. This can be a representation of the human soul. It is physically empty, but spiritually stuffed, just as it describes above. The next line led me to think that my theory was even more appropriate.

“Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion” (11-12)

If something is shapeless, colorless, forceless, and motionless, then it has to be invisible, and therefore almost nonexistent, but at the same time it is mentioned there as something that is present in the setting of this poem, meaning that it does exist. The only thing that I could think of as a possibility for the characters of the text was spirits of people that had passed away. This had a very strong connection to the Inferno, because this place is full of dead people that are paying for their sins. They will do this eternally because they are not alive anymore, but their soul will always be.

The following quote was the one that convinced me that the narrators of this poem were souls of the limbo.

“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men”(12-16)

When they mention “those who have crossed to deaths other kingdom,” it means that they have seen have the rest of the souls have passed through the limbo and then have went to their designated circles in hell, went to the purgatory or were received in heaven. These are the kingdoms of death, described by Dante in The Divine Comedy. When they refer themselves not as violent souls, but as hollow men, it is precisely because they are neutrals, haven’t really sinned as much but they never did make part of the church, which made them non spiritual beings, therefore hollow inside.

Throughout the whole poem, the narrators describe a pair of eyes that are continuously watching over them.
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams...
The eyes are not here...”(II/IV)

These eyes can represent various things. One possibility is that they are the eyes of God, who is watching them from above constantly to see what they are doing and not doing. Another possibility is that these eyes belong to Beatrice, Dante’s true love, for whom this man travels throughout the three kingdoms of death, just to be with.

This poem, was pretty much in my point of view an allusion to Dante’s Inferno, specially the Canto were the Limbo is described as well as its members. There are other allusions that could be found, but this one was the most obvious one.