Poems (Eliot, 1926)/A Cooking Egg

by T. S. Eliot

A COOKING EGG

En l'an trentiesme de mon aage
Que toutes mes hontes j'ay beues . . .

Pipit sate upright in her chair
 Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
 Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
 Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
 An Invitation to the Dance.
·····
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
 For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
 And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
 For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond:
We two shall lie together, lapt
 In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
 Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
 Than Pipit's experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
 Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
 Piccarda de Donati will conduct me. . .
·····
But where is the penny world I bought
 To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
 From Kentish Town and Golder's Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

 Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
 Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s