Thank you SO MUCH for not ruining it with some inappropriate ''dramatic'' music!

The reading of the final line surprised me yet I loved it. Life ends quickly, suddenly and harshly. He conveys all that in his reading of that final line, panicked pacing and then silence as our world ends.

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.

Never expected the last lines to be read that quickly

Wow -- I did not expect that reading of the final lines.

Shout out to the guy who coughs at 2:01

That ending is very appropriate and I do wish that more people who perform readings of The Hollow Men would listen to this reading and heed it.

This is the most "Dark Souls" poem I've heard till now ! Incredible piece of art Meditate on the last verses...

Omg when I was at grammar school our music master, a madman, wrote music to his poem and we sang it......

AND WE'VE ONLY BECOME MORE HOLLOW WITH EACH AND EVERY DAY THAT HAS PASSED SINCE.

So glad I heard it read in Eliots voice and it brings so much context and emotion

My favorite poem of all time. Every time I read it, every time I listen to Eliots reading, I get goose bumps and my skin crawls. I just LOVE IT !!!!

A pure unadorned recording! Thank you Thank You thank YOU!

I feel like I want this read by my children at my funeral.

the hasty delivery of the crown jewel of the poem, the resolution of the suspense, is so in line with the words... he ends the poem with almost with a running page and a fade out. there is no care.

My English teacher gave me a book of T.S Eliot Selected Poem and this is my favourite poem.

the oration and delivery is powerful.

A miraculously musical reading by the man himself. Very impressive.

A Divine Work

hes out there man...he's really out there

Greetings from Brazil! I was at Russel Square looking for this.

Memorized this poem once for a recital at school but this is so cool to hear T.S. himself read it. My rhythm very close to his but dang my end much slower and somber. Thank you for posting this!

Wonderful! I'm coming back to Eliot after some 36 years. I liked The Hollow Men when I first read it but my English teachers' interpretation of it put me off. I saw A.N. Wilsons' documentary on BBC 4 recently and the sound of Eliots' voice was a revelation. I'm not a poetry follower, I like Phillip Larkin, John Betjeman and a few other bits and pieces but The Hollow Men is now my number one favourite poem. For me it articulates my feelings of existential despair beautifully.

Rest in Peace Norm MacDonald. ❤️

This is one of the strengths of the Internet. T S sounds exactly like I thought he would. Very Boris Karloff - ish 😱🤣😂

In my early 20's, I was obsessed with poetry, Rimbaud, Eliot, Baudelaire...now I watch Netflix and drink tea

Last few seconds, ' 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.' = new cell ringer

One of my favourite types: an American who became British.

Who else is here for Jamie of "the sinner"?

2:56 - best part

I like how eliots poetry takes you on a spiritual journey. Stuff like prufrock is the listless, aimless wandering of youth and juvenile scepticism. This and the waste land show that scepticism and lack of direction evolving into an all encompassing terror and disease. Finally ash wednesday and four quartets bring us to a kind of religious resignation and hope.

No prophet is received in his own home. GO ELIOT!

Yes

Im sorry but the last lines were hilarious 😂 I didn’t expect him to read them that fast

❤

The Sinner Season 3 brought me here

I haven't actually had any interest in poetry, but I am getting a feeling I need to read more to understand this one.

The decline of the British Empire: "a valley of dying stars"

Heavy stuff!

Figueira brava

So eerie, like a stand up show by a clearly depressed person. Kinda reminds me of the final scene in The Wicker Man.

Incredible. Even today The stuffed men lead us to destruction.

I want to here Mr. T read this....

And this proves that all poetic interpretation is subjective, and so every poetic interpretation is choice and guesswork--- not knowable the way every English teacher I ever had suggested, reading this slowly and morrosely. Not contemplatively as he does. And those last lines-- read always so slowly every time I've heard it and group-analyzed why in every English class, he zoomed through 🤣 Thanks for this recording.

Brando was brilliant reading it as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. !

Visceral

Marlon Brando did a good job in Apocalypse Now with this post- WWI thoughts of despair.

Wow. I like the interpretation about war on another post. This reading though points the interpretation as heroine addition. Too bad nobody made a video showing contemporary pictures of our lost hollow men on the streets.

You don’t have to be hollow if you just farm more humanity.

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 with a cough

He is literally me

Hollow men = Tin Woodman Stuffed men = Scarecrow

If I wasn't delated from FB and without real life freinds I'd post this somewhere. I feel like I am alone, only on an island with my wife and child watching the apocalypse, as people seem replaced or to have vanished and only vapid can be seen but still in dwindalong number. What's next down the road I don't know, I dont even knowing I would have anyone to make the remark to

Have you any ‘video’ of T. S. Eliot's recitation of his poems?

eliot's voice is dry and heavy which is quite suitable fo this verse

I think most of you have it wrong. We are all hollow men trying to fill ourselves with meaning. Alas, we are still hollow men.

Krautrock's Faust 'We Are The Hallo Men' : kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Zr-Re7CYrpeviHU.html

"This is the way the world ends, not with a band but with a whimper". A moment of silence for all those dieing and dead of Corona virus.

“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 “ love this part

this is so terrifying !

This poem must have inspired Dark Souls series.

All I could hear was the scratching in the background.

who is else is here because of halo 3 :ODST?

Valéry is your friend

Maybe unpopular opinion, but imo this poem can be read better / performed better than the way TSE did himself. It's nice to hear his own rendition, regardless.

Dark stuff.

APOCALYPSE NOW

So he’s basically saying we’re scarecrows, right?

Not with a bang but with a whimper ☹️

the horror, the horror...

We need a poet about the Full Women, for it is not just men who follow . . ., and lead, but women who have the freedom to lead us down a fuller path.

Marlon Brando read it better.

Why he sounds so scary

The poet is often not the best to recite their work. This is a prime example. I felt this was an often lifeless recitation.

T.S. Eliot is expelled from modern liberal universities.

He sounds annoyed

that is crap, just admit it