the Dog
The allusion is to The White Devil (1612), a play by John Webster. The original text reads:
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, / For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.
The speaker is Cornelia, whose son has been killed; she imagines him buried in a makeshift grave, and fears it will be disturbed.
Eliot brings this scene into the modern-day suburban England by substituting a friendly family dog for the vicious wolf. There is a gruesome humour in The Burial of the Dead's final depiction of death and unwilled resurrection, recalling the beginning of the poem and the disturbed sleep of the lilacs.
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, / For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.
The speaker is Cornelia, whose son has been killed; she imagines him buried in a makeshift grave, and fears it will be disturbed.
Eliot brings this scene into the modern-day suburban England by substituting a friendly family dog for the vicious wolf. There is a gruesome humour in The Burial of the Dead's final depiction of death and unwilled resurrection, recalling the beginning of the poem and the disturbed sleep of the lilacs.
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