'oming over the Starnbergersee' makes the location of the memory more specific, because Starnbergersee is the name of a lake that's just a couple miles south of Munich, Germany.

Think of the speaker as a character here.

This isn't Eliot, or some third person narrator yakking away.

At this point, you suddenly realize that you're probably dealing with a dramatic monologue, meaning that the poem is being spoken by a specific character.

These lines talk about how 'summer surprised us,' meaning that the poem's speaker has a crowd they hung out with in the past, but we're not clear who 'us' is.

With a shower of rain we stopped in the colonnade ,Īnd went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten ,Īnd drank coffee, and talked for an hour.īing gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee Eliot is thematically showing you here that an unfinished thought has a way of infecting our sense of certainty and nibbling away at it like a termite.

Also, the iambs of the first three lines have started to break down, although you're still getting those enjambed participle -ing words at the end of each line.

These lines show that when it comes to feeling bad, it's better to be forgetful and almost numb in your emotions, surviving on the little bits of joy in your life as if they were 'dried tubers' from you potato cellar (7). The speaker says that instead of spring being the best time of year, 'Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow' (5-6).So right off the bat, he suggests that traditional forms of art might not bring the sense of closure and certainty they once did.

But Eliot's enjambment keeps making it unstable by making every thought seem unfinished. These lines are also written in almost-perfect iambic meter, which is really supposed to give you a sense of stability in a poem.Also, you might want to note how Eliot really works the poetic technique of enjambment to carry each phrase over the line breaks with extra participles or -ing words (i.e., breeding, mixing, and stirring).The spring rain might normally bring new life, but for you it only stirs 'Dull roots' (4). But if you're lonely, seeing flowers blooming and people kissing might make you even more depressed about your 'Memory and desire' (3). An unknown speaker claims that 'April is the cruellest month,' even though we might usually think of spring as a time of love (1).

Stupid zombies snow day 69