The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T. S. Eliot

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is T. S. Eliot’s 1915 dramatic monologue about a timid, aging man who walks through a foggy city toward an evening party and never asks the “overwhelming question” on his mind. Its 131 lines first appeared in Poetry magazine in June 1915, and the poem is widely treated as the start of modernist poetry in English.

Our reading: Prufrock is never turned down, because he turns himself down first. He writes the woman’s refusal before he speaks, and he calls his endless delay patience. The love song never gets sung because its singer has already scripted the reply.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems

Summary

Prufrock invites an unnamed “you” to walk with him through cheap streets at dusk to a drawing room where women talk of Michelangelo. On the way, he keeps telling himself there will be time to decide, worries about his thinning hair and thin arms, and wonders whether he dares to “disturb the universe.” He imagines finally speaking and being told “That is not what I meant at all,” decides he is a minor attendant rather than a Hamlet, and drifts into a vision of mermaids who will not sing to him.

Nothing actually happens. The whole poem takes place in his head, between the invitation in line 1 and the drowning in line 131.

The Poem

The text below follows the first book edition, Prufrock and Other Observations (London: The Egoist, 1917), with the accents of Dante’s Italian epigraph restored.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
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.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
    So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
    And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
    And should I then presume?
    And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
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.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
    Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
    That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
    “That is not it at all,
    That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Background

Eliot, born in St. Louis on September 26, 1888, began the poem in 1910 as a Harvard student and finished it in 1911, partly during a year in Paris and a summer in Munich. He was 21 or 22. The voice owes much to the French poet Jules Laforgue, whose ironic, self-mocking speakers Eliot had discovered in 1908, and the dramatic monologue form comes from Robert Browning.

The poem sat unpublished for four years. In 1914, Eliot showed it to Ezra Pound in London, and Pound pressed Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry in Chicago, to print it. She hesitated over its strangeness but ran it in the June 1915 issue. Pound then included it in his Catholic Anthology (November 1915), and it opened Eliot’s first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, published by The Egoist in London in June 1917 in a small edition. That book is dedicated to Jean Verdenal, a French friend from Eliot’s Paris year who was killed at Gallipoli in 1915.

The Italian epigraph comes from Dante’s Inferno (Canto 27, lines 61 to 66). It is spoken by Guido da Montefeltro, a soul wrapped in flame, who agrees to tell his shameful story only because he believes his listener can never return to the living world to repeat it.

Analysis and Themes

Most readings call Prufrock indecisive. That is true but too gentle. The poem shows a man who has worked out, in detail, why he will fail before he tries, and who uses that rehearsal as a reason not to try. Each section below follows one of the ways he talks himself out of his own life.

The Epigraph Tells Us No One Will Hear This

Guido speaks freely only because he thinks his words will never leave hell. Placed at the head of the poem, his speech sets the terms for Prufrock’s: this is a confession that can be made only because it will never be said aloud to anyone who matters. The “love song” is real, but its intended listener will never hear it. Everything we read is the part Prufrock keeps to himself.

“You and I” Is a Man Talking to Himself

The opening invitation sounds like a lover’s, but the companion never speaks, never acts, and is never described. Eliot later suggested the “you” could be an unidentified male friend, yet the poem works best when the pair is read as Prufrock and his own watching self. That split explains the poem’s strangest habit: he sees himself from outside, through other people’s eyes, noting the bald spot and the thin arms before anyone else can.

“There Will Be Time” Is Delay Dressed as Patience

The phrase repeats until it stops meaning what it says. Prufrock lists “a hundred indecisions” and “a hundred visions and revisions” as if they were a schedule, then admits in line 48 that “a minute will reverse” any decision. The repetition borrows the voice of Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” where the lover argues there is not time enough, and turns it upside down. Marvell’s speaker hurries; Prufrock reassures himself that hurrying is unnecessary, which is how a man spends his life on coffee spoons.

He Writes Her Rejection Before He Asks

The two long “would it have been worth it” stanzas are the heart of the poem. Prufrock imagines the grand gesture, even announcing himself as Lazarus back from the dead, and in the same breath imagines the woman settling a pillow and saying, “That is not what I meant at all.” He supplies both sides of the conversation. A rejection he has scripted himself is safer than one he might actually receive, and the tense gives him away: “would it have been” is the grammar of something already given up.

Hamlet Is Too Big a Part

Hamlet is the great literary example of a man who delays, so Prufrock’s denial in line 111 is pointed. He refuses even the dignity of the tragic hero and casts himself as an attendant lord, a Polonius figure who swells a procession and gives advice. It is a joke at his own expense, but it is also another way out. A minor character is not expected to act.

Why the Mermaids Will Not Sing to Him

The ending turns from rolled trousers and a daring peach to the most beautiful lines in the poem. The mermaids belong to the sea world of the earlier “ragged claws,” a place below speech where he could live without being looked at. Then “human voices wake us, and we drown.” The voices are the drawing room again, and waking into ordinary social life is what kills the dream. Prufrock can only exist comfortably where no one can hear him, which brings the poem back to Dante.

Form and Technique

The poem runs to 131 lines in verse paragraphs of very uneven length, from the single line “I do not think that they will sing to me” to twelve-line blocks. Rows of dots mark three breaks in the train of thought. It is a dramatic monologue, the form of Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” but where Browning’s speakers control their listeners, Prufrock cannot control even his own sentences.

There is no fixed meter. Lines range from the three-syllable “Do I dare” to the long, prose-like “After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor,” and the refrain falls into a neat four-beat line: “In the ROOM the WOmen COME and GO.” That neatness is part of the satire, since the most regular rhythm in the poem belongs to empty chatter.

Although it is often called free verse, the poem rhymes constantly but without a scheme. Rhymes arrive in couplets (go and Michelangelo), in triplets (each, beach, and peach in lines 122 to 124), and at long distances, so the reader keeps hearing echoes without being able to predict them. Repetition does the work that meter would usually do: “there will be time,” “Do I dare?,” “known them all,” and “how should I presume?” return like nervous habits.

Notable Lines

These are the passages readers quote most, along with what each one does in the poem.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Lines 1 to 3

Two lines of romantic invitation are wrecked by a hospital simile. In 1915, this was the moment readers knew poetry had changed: the evening is not lovely but anesthetized, numb and waiting for an operation.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Lines 49 to 51

The most famous line in the poem turns a life into a series of tiny, polite portions. Notice that he presents this weariness as knowledge, which lets him treat not trying as wisdom.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Lines 73 to 74

Prufrock wishes himself out of consciousness altogether. A crab has no face to prepare and no one to answer, and the silent sea anticipates the drowning at the end.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Lines 129 to 131

The pronoun shifts from “I” to “we,” pulling the reader into the dream just as it ends. The last word reverses the usual logic, since waking is what drowns them.

Themes

Four ideas run through the poem and give it its lasting pull.

Paralysis. Prufrock’s problem is not a lack of desire but an excess of thinking. Every possible action is examined until it is impossible, and the poem’s questions are never answered.

Time and aging. The poem begins by insisting there will be time and ends with “I grow old.” The gap between those two claims is the whole tragedy, and the rolled trousers and parted hair show a man trying to look young after the moment has passed.

Self-consciousness. Prufrock feels pinned and wriggling under other people’s eyes, but most of the judging is done by him. He imagines what “they will say” long before anyone says it.

Alienation in the modern city. Cheap hotels, sawdust restaurants, and lonely men in shirt-sleeves surround a drawing room where culture has become small talk. Neither world offers him a place to speak honestly.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Eliot’s poem.

What Is “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” About?

It is about a self-conscious man who wants to declare himself to a woman, or to ask some larger question about his life, and cannot bring himself to do it. Over 131 lines, he walks through the evening city, imagines the party, rehearses being misunderstood, and retreats into a daydream of mermaids.

Who Is J. Alfred Prufrock?

Prufrock is the fictional speaker of the poem, a balding, carefully dressed, painfully self-aware man who narrates the whole monologue. He is not Eliot, though Eliot gave him many of his own youthful anxieties. The stiff, formal name, with its initial and middle name, is part of the comedy.

How Old Was T. S. Eliot When He Wrote Prufrock?

He was 21 or 22. Eliot, born on September 26, 1888, began the poem in 1910 and finished it in 1911, but it was not published until June 1915, when he was 26.

What Is Prufrock’s Overwhelming Question?

The poem never says, and the silence is deliberate. The party, the woman’s arms, and the imagined reply “That is not what I meant at all” point to a declaration of love, but the question also widens into whether his life means anything. Eliot leaves it unnamed so that the reader shares Prufrock’s avoidance.

What Does the Yellow Fog Symbolize in Prufrock?

The yellow fog is literal city smog, described as a cat that rubs, licks, and curls up to sleep. It mirrors Prufrock himself: it circles the house, presses close to the windows, and settles down without ever going inside.

Glossary

These words and allusions may need explaining for modern readers.

• etherised (line 3): Anesthetized with ether before surgery.
• sawdust restaurants (line 7): Cheap eating houses with sawdust on the floor to soak up spills.
• works and days (line 29): An echo of Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod’s poem on farm labor.
• dying fall (line 52): A phrase from Orsino’s opening speech in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, meaning a cadence that fades away.
• butt-ends (line 60): The stubs of smoked cigarettes.
• head … brought in upon a platter (line 82): John the Baptist, whose head was brought to Salome on a dish.
• Lazarus (line 94): The man Jesus raised from the dead in the Gospel of John.
• magic lantern (line 105): An early slide projector that threw images onto a screen.
• progress (line 113): A state procession or royal journey.
• high sentence (line 117): Lofty sayings; Chaucer uses the phrase for his learned Clerk.

Related Poems

If Prufrock’s voice stays with you, these poems make good companions.

• To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell: The urgent seduction poem that Prufrock’s “there will be time” and “squeezed the universe into a ball” quietly answer.
• My Last Duchess by Robert Browning: The model dramatic monologue, with a speaker as controlling as Prufrock is helpless.
• Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson: An aging man who resolves to act, the exact opposite of Prufrock’s retreat.
• Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold: A speaker at a window, facing the sea, who finds the modern world empty of certainty.
• Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Another well-dressed man whose polished surface hides despair.