hypocrite lecteur!

The section ends with the final line of Baudelaire's Au Lecteur (To the Reader). In this prefatory poem of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) Baudelaire depicts the evil tendencies of human beings, "every day...descending further into hell". But even worse than evil-doing to is Ennui, the personification of apathy and inaction. (This again has a connection to Dante, where the souls of the apathetic are forbidden to cross the River Acheron: an image Eliot would return to in The Hollow Men).

The Burial of the Dead ends with a return to the thought that, like the lilacs, we would prefer to remain in the dead land rather than endure the effort and pain of truly coming to life.

Baudelaire (and Eliot) warn their readers not to think of themselves as morally superior to their flawed fellow human beings:
Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère ! (Hypocrite reader - my fellow man - my brother!)

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