Rhapsody On A Windy Night

“Preludes” by T. S. Eliot (1915)

“Preludes,” another early Eliot poem, was published in the same issue of Blast as “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” Made up of four numbered sections, it resembles “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” in a number of ways. It explores Alienation in the City, with its dullness and monotony—a rainy winter evening at the end of the working day, then morning with its “faint stale smells of beer” in the street. Everyone follows the same routines as “dingy shades” are raised “[i]n a thousand furnished rooms.” In the third section, night reveals “[t]he thousand sordid images / Of which your soul was constituted.”

“Morning at the Window” by T. S. Eliot (1917)

Like “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and “Preludes,” this poem presents a bleak picture of urban life. It appeared immediately after “Rhapsody” in Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, and could almost be set in the same location at breakfast time the following morning. Looking out of the window, the speaker observes downhearted housemaids gathering at the gates and notices that it is foggy. They also see “twisted faces from the bottom of the street,” which recalls the multiple uses of twisting in “Rhapsody.” A passerby gives an “aimless” smile. It is a bleak scene on a soulless morning in the city.

“The Boston Evening Transcript” by T. S. Eliot (1917)

This is another early Eliot poem. The speaker is delivering the evening paper to their cousin Harriet at her home in Boston. The poem suggests a tedious, monotonous routine, in its way as lifeless and meaningless as the speaker’s world in “Rhapsody.”