I used to like this poem, now, I don't know why, it doesn't seem to reach me very much. I found it on the internet together with this short annalysis. I agree with the author of the annalysis on the fact that T.S Eliot throughout his life and poetry was deeply concerned with alienation "I find words I never thouhgt to speak, in a land i never thought I would revisit/ When I left my body in a distant shore" " Home is where one starts from" "
Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance"
But I do not agree with the fact that the author is experiencing alienation in this poem, in fact, it is quite the opposite. He is experiencing reconciliation o recognaisance . He is findig "Words he never thought he to speak" He is back to his beginning. He was alienated before, "in a disntant shore" "in a foreign land" now, he finds the words he had "forgotten" and now he "remembers", in this poem, like in the Four Quartets, there is a movement of going away and returning to the beginning, and experiencing reconciliation.

By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer


By T.S. Eliot

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.




With Marina, written in 1929, Eliot creates a monologue for Pericles, a character in Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, who, on the brink of his return home after long travels overseas, experiences only alienation. Throughout his life, Eliot was deeply concerned with the problems of dissociation from one's environment, and consequent dissolution of personality, that he saw as unavoidable consequences of modern life. These subjects recur in Hollow Men and The Wasteland.