Read Online Complete Poems and Plays by T. S. Eliot - Free Book Online Page B

: You’ll be the cannibal!
    SWEENEY : You’ll be the missionary!
    You’ll be my little seven stone missionary!
    I’ll gobble you up. I’ll be the cannibal.
    DORIS : You’ll carry me off? To a cannibal isle?
    SWEENEY : I’ll be the cannibal.
    DORIS :                                     I’ll be the missionary.
    I’ll convert you!
    SWEENEY :                               I’ll convert you !
    Into a stew.
    A nice little, white little, missionary stew.
    DORIS : You wouldn’t eat me!
    SWEENEY :                               Yes I’d eat you!
    In a nice little, white little, soft little, tender little,
    Juicy little, right little, missionary stew.
    You see this egg
    You see this egg
    Well that’s life on a crocodile isle.
    There’s no telephones
    There’s no gramophones
    There’s no motor cars
    No two-seaters, no six-seaters,
    No Citroën, no Rolls-Royce.
    Nothing to eat but the fruit as it grows.
    Nothing to see but the palmtrees one way
    And the sea the other way,
    Nothing to hear but the sound of the surf.
    Nothing at all but three things
    DORIS :                                     What things?

    S WEENEY : Birth, and copulation and death.
    That’s all, that’s all, that’s all, that’s all,
    Birth, and copulation, and death.
    DORIS : I’d be bored.
    SWEENEY :                               You’d be bored.
    Birth, and copulation, and death.
    DORIS : I’d be bored.
    SWEENEY :                               You’d be bored.
    Birth, and copulation, and death.
    That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
    Birth, and copulation, and death.
    I’ve been born, and once is enough.
    You don’t remember, but I remember,
    Once is enough.
    SONG BY WAUCHOPE AND HORSFALL
     
    SWARTS AS TAMBO. SNOW AS BONES
     
Under the bamboo
Bamboo bamboo
Under the bamboo tree
Two live as one
One live as two
Two live as three
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree .
     

     
    Where the breadfruit fall
And the penguin call
And the sound is the sound of the sea
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tre e
     

     
    Where the Gauguin maids
In the banyan shades
Wear palmleaf drapery
Under the bam
Under the boo
Under the bamboo tree .  
     

     
    T ell me in what part of the wood
Do you want to flirt with me?
Under the breadfruit, banyan, palmleaf
Or under the bamboo tree?
Any old tree will do for me
Any old wood is just as good
Any old isle is just my style
Any fresh egg
Any fresh egg
And the sound of the coral sea .  
     
     
    DORIS : I don’t like eggs; I never liked eggs;
    And I don’t like life on your crocodile isle. 
     
     
    DORIS : That’s not life, that’s no life
    Why I’d just as soon be dead.
    SWEENEY : That’s what life is. Just is
    DORIS :                                     What is?
    What’s that life is?
    S WEENEY :                                 Life is death.
    I knew a man once did a girl in —
    DORIS : Oh Mr. Sweeney, please don’t talk,
    I cut the cards before you came
    And I drew the coffin
    SWARTS :                                 You drew the coffin?
    DORIS : I drew the COFFIN very last card.
    I don’t care for such conversation
    A woman runs a terrible risk.
    SNOW : Let Mr. Sweeney continue his story.
    I assure you, Sir, we are very interested.
    SWEENEY : I knew a man once did a girl in.
    Any man might do a girl in
    Any man has to, needs to, wants to
    Once in a lifetime, do a girl in
    Well he kept her there in a bath
    With a gallon of lysol in a bath
    SWARTS : These fellows always get pinched in the end.
    SNOW : Excuse me, they don’t all get pinched in the end.
    What about them bones on Epsom Heath?
    I seen that in the papers
    You seen it in the papers
    They don’t all get pinched in the end.
    DORIS : A woman runs a terrible risk.
    SNOW : Let Mr.