Ash Wednesday

Part I

In Part I, the speaker is disillusioned with the way he has been living and is ready to construct for himself some new way of being in the world. The first three lines make it clear that he has made a decisive shift in his way of thinking and he is not likely to go back on it. Line 4 is an allusion to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29,” and it gives a clue as to what Eliot’s speaker has turned his back on. Shakespeare’s speaker is in a depressed mood:

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least (Lines 5-8).

The allusion to this sonnet appears in Eliot’s lines, “Because I do not hope to turn / Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope” (Lines 3-4). The speaker is no longer willing to put out any effort to excel others or to realize an ambition. He does not care for success or reputation. The reference to the “agèd eagle” who can no longer be bothered to “stretch its wings” (Line 6) suggests someone who has done it all before with some ease and success but will not stir himself in similar fashion again.