T. S. Eliot, "The Fire Sermon" [excerpt from The Wasteland]

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear                                    185
                                                                                    
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                   190


Musing upon the king my brother's wreck

And on the king my father's death before him.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.                           195


But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

[Note the section's allusion to Marvell begins with another allusion, to Edmund Spenser's Prothalamion, a wedding poem he wrote for a patron's two daughters, and a "sister poem" to the "Epithalamion" written for his own wedding to Elizabeth Boyle.  What does Eliot see in common when comparing Marvell with Spenser?  Remember that Eliot was one of a group of early 20th-century critics instrumental in restoring Marvell's reputation, along with the rest of those Johnson disparaged as "Metaphysicals."]