Question

Read the verses from the Bible’s Ecclesiastes 3.1-4.

1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Which lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" are an allusion to these verses?
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

Answer 1

The allusion is in the repeated phrase and the following infinitive clauses — i.e. the lines beginning "There will be time...": specifically,

- "There will be time to murder and create, / And time for all the works and days of hands,"
- "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;"

These echo the Bible's "To every thing there is a season... a time to be born, and a time to die..." by using the same "a time/to" pattern, but Eliot subverts it with modern, ambiguous actions.