This is for my daughter,
— And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
Excerpts from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Portrait of a Lady,” and “The Waste Land” in COLLECTED POEMS 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright © 1936 by Harcourt Brace & Company, copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.