Sweeney Among the Nightingales

"Sweeney Among the Nightingales" is a poem by T. S. Eliot, published in his 1920 anthology of poetry, Poems. The action in the poem centers on a person, whom Eliot suggests is perhaps a common zookeeper, named "Apeneck Sweeney"; however, what takes place is less clearly explained. The language used by Eliot paints a very rich atmosphere of London at night, so much so that this atmosphere is more intelligible than any actions that take place. However, these actions include Sweeney's encounters with two women (a mysterious woman wearing a Spanish cape, and Rachel "née" Rabinovitch) who appear to shatter Sweeney's silent, boring existence in language suggestive of stifled sexual predation.

The poem draws to a close with Sweeney leaving the two women without accepting their advances, but nonetheless seeming to be flattered by the encounter. It ends near the Convent of the Sacred Heart (itself suggestive of celibacy and sexlessness), with the nightingales singing nearby. The poem then takes a dramatic shift in the final stanza, when Eliot suggests the violent scene of the great Greek king Agamemnon's death at the hands of his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, which Eliot seems to draw as a parallel to the scene of Sweeney and his encounter with the women.