But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ….

T.S. Eliot, excerpt from Portrait of a Lady, first published in the magazine Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (1915)

Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.

T.S. Eliot, excerpt from Portrait of a Lady, first published in the magazine Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (1915)