The poem describes "hollow men" who are empty and meaningless. Their voices are quiet and without purpose. They are paralyzed and without real form or color. These hollow men stand as lifeless stone images receiving the supplications of the dead. They exist in a barren, cactus-filled "dead land" between ideas and reality, desires and actions, where life is very long and the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

1. The Hollow Men T.S. Eliot

2. We are the men hollow

3. We are the stuffed men

4. Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

5. Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless

6. As wind in dry grass In our dry cellar

7. Shape without form, Shade without colour ,

8. Paralysed force , gesture without motion;

9. With direct eyes , to death’s other K ingdom Those who have crossed

10. Remember us – if at all – not as lost Violent souls, but only As The hollow men The stuffed men.

11. Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom

12. These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column

13. There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More d i s t a n t and more solemn Than a fading star

14. Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom

15. Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises

16. Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves

17. No nearer – Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom

18. This is the dead land This is the cactus land

19. Here the stone images Are raised , here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand UNDER THE TWINKLE OF A FADING STAR.

20. Is it like this In death’s other kingdom

21. Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone

22. The are not here There are no here eyes eyes

23. In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley

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

25. Sightless, unless

26. The eyes REAPPEAR As the perpetual star

27. Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.

28. 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

29. Between the idea And the reality

30. Between the motion And the act FALLS THE SHADOW FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM

31. Between the conception And the creation FALLS THE SHADOW Life is very long

32. Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency Between the essence And the descent FALLS THE SHADOW And the Existence

33. FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM

34. For Thine is Life is For Thine is the

35. This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends

36. Not with a bang but a whimper THE END