First Debate between the Body and Soul  
 
by T. S. Eliot
   
The August wind is shambling down the street  
   
          A blind old man who coughs and spits sputters  
          Stumbling among the alleys and the gutters.  
            
          He pokes and prods  
          With senile patience 5
          The withered leaves  
          Of our sensations —  
   
And yet devoted to the pure idea  
One sits delaying in the vacant square  
Forced to endure the blind inconscient stare 10
Of twenty leering houses that exude   
The odour of their turpitude  
And a street piano through the dusty trees  
Insisting:  “Make the best of your position” —  
The pure Idea dies of inanition 15 
The street pianos through the trees  
Whine and wheeze.  
   
          Imaginations  
          Masturbations  
          The withered leaves 20
          Of our sensations —  
   
The eye retains the images,  
The sluggish brain will not react  
Nor distils  
The dull precipitates of fact 25
The emphatic mud of physical sense  
The cosmic smudge of an enormous thumb  
Posting bills  
On the soul.  And always come  
The whine and wheeze 30
Of street pianos through the streets  
   
          Imagination’s  
          Poor relations  
          The withered leaves  
          Of our sensations. 35
             
Absolute! complete idealist  
A supersubtle peasant  
(Conception most unpleasant)  
A supersubtle peasant in a shabby square  
Assist me to the pure idea — 40
Regarding nature without love or fear  
For a little while, a little while  
Standing our ground —  
Till life evaporates into a smile  
Simple and profound. 45
   
Street pianos through the trees  
Whine and wheeze  
   
          Imagination’s  
          Defecations  
          The withered leaves 50
          Of our sensations —  
   
 
A blind old man — note that this is an instance of personification (of the wind).  There is no literal “blind old man” in the poem.
 
pure idea — An idea without any dependence on or regard for material reality.  One who is devoted to the pure idea would be an idealist; see comment below.
 
inconscient — French for unconscious.
 
street piano — A street piano, also known as a barrel piano, is a stringed instrument controlled by a hand-crank rather than a keyboard.  The interchangeable barrels act much like the rolls in a player-piano, though each barrel might hold several songs. The operator inserts the barrel, selects one of these short, somewhat limited tunes — the instrument had a range of less than fifty notes, unlike a piano which has eighty-eight keys — and turns the crank, controlling the speed of the music by increasing or decreasing how fast he turned it.  Street piano players were low-level public entertainers.
 
posting bills — to post bills is to paste advertisements up on a wall; you will sometimes see a sign reading “Post No Bills” on a wall, especially the temporary plywood walls that surround construction sites
 
idealist — in philosophy, one who believes in an ideal reality beyond the ability of the senses to perceive (Plato is an example, see “The Allegory of the Cave” ); the opposite of materialist
 
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