Jerome Walsh wrote:
> Thanks for that additional information, Ken.  As I've said before, I 
> make no pretense to credentials to interpret Eliot.  The words in the 
> presenting question, "We would see a sign," are so strongly redolent 
> of biblical passages that I thought the biblical usage would be 
> relevant to the discussion.
    Yes, agreed, without a doubt. In a poem where Christ and worship of 
Christ are driving themes, your explanation of signs and wonders is dead 
on. Or perhaps live on.

> Certainly Eliot's other sources are equally relevant and equally 
> essential to reconstructing what Eliot may have had in mind.  I 
> remember reading Collingwood on art (was the title The Principles of 
> Art?) so many years ago that it seems like another life.

  Ditto on the "many years ago."  And you've got the title. My Eliot 
prof. way back when made much of Collingwood and three-cornered 
thinking. He suggested a way of reading The Waste Land that I haven't 
seen (nor obviously done) somewhat related. I think Gerontion is a very 
dense poem and like Eliot's other "intensely serious" poems of Poems 
1920 requires more of readers than has generally been acknowledged.

 Thanks,
 Ken