Question

Which two sections of this excerpt from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" contain a biblical allusion?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

Answer 1

"Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,"

"To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,"

Step-by-step explanation:

T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock" talks of the alienation of human beings and the despair of the speaker, J. Prufrock. The poem also seems to address an unnamed potential lover that Prufrock seems to have his eyes on.

The two instances of biblical illusions in the given excerpt are in the lines "Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter," and "To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead". These two lines are references to the prophet John whose head was brought on a platter by order of King Herod at the request of Herodias's daughter [Mark 6:14-29]. And the second reference is about Lazarus who was raised from the dead by Jesus [John 11: 38-44].