The lines are taken from the Canterbury Tales by Choser where April was defined sweetest. In The Waste Land the lines speak about it in a different way from ordinary, as if April brought negative elements.

The poem The Waste Land begins with a Greek quotation. The lines in Greek are taken from Petronio's Satyricon and they say the following words: “Moreover, I've also seen the Sibyl of Cumae with my eyes hanging inside the bulb. And when the children asked her << Sibyl, what you want? >> She answered << I want to die >>”

The epigraph anticipate the poem's theme and an athmosphere of an arid and infertile land where the human doesn't find toold for live. This expresses Modernism spirit.

T. S. Eliot dedicates the poem to Ezra Pound, father of Imagest Poetry because Eliot promoted innovative forms of poetry and also because Exra Pound was one of the most significant people in contact with him. Moreover Eliot juxtaposes the foundant tests of Occidental tradition so the reader must get in a position of humility with the knowledge of all the most importants tests of Occidental society.