| Line | Quotations | Source | Function |
| Line 1 " | Unreal city" | Baudelaire, "The seven old man" | London (the city) aquires a spectral dimension |
| Line 4 | I had not thought death had undone so many | Dante's Inferno III | Crowd zombies in hyperbolic function |
| Line 5 | Sights, shorts and infrequent | Dante's Inferno IV | Features of people who walks along the street, like damned people who have to pass through Acheronte |
| Line 9 | With a dead sound on the final stroke of the nine | Luke, 23:44 | Context of Christ death, passage from the living people to the dead ones |
Steston is the name given to the representative of a City commuter in the 1920's.
Together with the author he experienced war some time ago. He attempts to overcome the sterility of the land through fertility rites that, in the past, brought fertility but which no longer do so.
4) The passage suggests that all modern people belong to the same sad condition of hypocrisy, they are brothers just for that.
The reader cannot escape from his condition.
5) References to Mylae: past and present live into memory. When you think about something present you can compare it , therefore categorize it only referring to past events.
By references to a common past you can merge the feelings and communicate them.