Which T.S. Eliot poem begins 'Let us go then, you and I'?

“Which T. S. Eliot poem begins ‘Let us go then, you and I’?” The line opens “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It is Eliot’s best-known early poem and one of the landmark works of literary modernism.

Eliot began writing the poem around 1910, while he was a student and later a graduate student. It was published in 1915 in Poetry magazine after the poet Ezra Pound helped bring it to the attention of editor Harriet Monroe. The poem later appeared in Eliot’s first collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917.

The speaker, the anxious and self-conscious J. Alfred Prufrock, moves through an urban world of evening streets, social gatherings, and imagined conversations. He repeatedly questions his courage, appearance, age, and ability to act. Its dramatic monologue form lets readers hear thoughts that the speaker may never openly express.

The poem is sometimes confused with Eliot’s later works The Waste Land or “The Hollow Men,” which also use fragmented modernist imagery. “Prufrock,” however, is especially recognizable for its opening invitation, its hesitation, and its closing mermaid image.