185. A COLD BLAST stifles the weeping and everything is turned around, at least momentarily. Tears (line 182) are replaced with a chuckle (line 186), and melancholy becomes musing (line 191). Each of these lines are malapropisms of the alluded sources: what is heard “at my back” distorts a phrase from Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress (see notes 141 and 197), and the ”musing” at line 191 modifies a line from the Tempest (see note 192).
The cold blast also marks the return of winter (line 190), as the sweet Thames of autumn (lines 173-184) becomes a dull canal beside a gashouse (lines 189-190). Compare winter’s dull roots being stirred by spring rains at the beginning of the poem (line 4). As the stir becomes a blast, Eliot also acknowledges the seasonal cycle of his changing emotions, rattled “year to year” (line 195).
186. RATTLING BONES occur here and at lines 22, 116, 195, 316 and 391. See also Whitman†, Memories 15:
“I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them.”
See also Shakespeare*, The Tempest 1.2.398 (“of his bones are coral made”).
For an extended rattling bone image, see Ezekiel* 37:1-9:
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
191. SITTING ON A BANK: Eliot*: “Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.” See Prince Ferdinand at Shakespeare*, The Tempest 1.2.390-391:
“...Sitting on a bank
weeping again the king my father's wreck...”
For the moment Eliot has turned sadness to musing and chuckling (line 186), but there was weeping when he first sat down (line 182) and will be yet again (line 298, and see note 182). The riverbank setting and the somber subject of death remain the same, however, even as the emotions change.
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* see note 0.1 †see note 2
