“And on the king my father’s death before him”: Shakespeare’s Tempest

Abstract

“The Fire Sermon” begins with water, layering the River Thames (both Eliot’s desolate version and Spenser’s glistening one), Lake Leman (where Eliot worked on The Waste Land), and even the Old Testament rivers of Babylon, where exiled Israelites weep (“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion,” Psalm 137.1). Beginning with line 185, though, the poem’s riverscape becomes grim and industrial:

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I was fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck

And on the king my father’s death before him. (WL 185–92)