The Hollow Men by T. S. Elliot
 I
 We are the hollow men
 We are the stuffed men
 Leaning together
 Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
 Our dried voices, when
 We whisper together
 Are quiet and meaningless
 As wind in dry grass
 Or rats’ feet over broken glass
 In our dry cellar

 Shape without form, shade without colour,
 Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

 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
 The stuffed men.

 II
 Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
 In death’s dream kingdom
 These do not appear:
 There, the eyes are
 Sunlight on a broken column
 There, is a tree swinging
 And voices are
 In the wind’s singing
 More distant and more solemn
 Than a fading star. 

 Let me be no nearer
 In death’s dream kingdom
 Let me also wear
 Such deliberate disguises
 Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
 In a field
 Behaving as the wind behaves
 No nearer— 

 Not that final meeting
 In the twilight kingdom 

 III
 This is the dead land
 This is cactus land
 Here the stone images
 Are raised, here they receive
 The supplication of a dead man’s hand
 Under the twinkle of a fading star. 

 Is it like this
 In death’s other kingdom
 Waking alone
 At the hour when we are
 Trembling with tenderness
 Lips that would kiss
 Form prayers to broken stone. 

 IV
 The eyes are not here
 There are no eyes here
 In this valley of dying stars
 In this hollow valley
 This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms 

 In this last of meeting places
 We grope together
 And avoid speech
 Gathered on this beach of the tumid river  

 Sightless, unless
 The eyes reappear
 As the perpetual star
 Multifoliate rose
 Of death’s twilight kingdom
 The hope only
 Of empty men.

 V
 Here we go round the prickly pear
 Prickly pear prickly pear
 Here we go round the prickly pear
 At five o’clock in the morning. 

 Between the idea
 And the reality
 Between the motion
 And the act
 Falls the Shadow
                                 For Thine is the Kingdom

 Between the conception
 And the creation
 Between the emotion
 And the response
 Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

 Between the desire
 And the spasm
 Between the potency
 And the existence
 Between the essence
 And the descent
 Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom
 For Thine is
 Life is
 For Thine is the

 This is the way the world ends
 This is the way the world ends
 This is the way the world ends
 Not with a bang but a whimper.