The first stanza is about Phlebas the Phoenician. Eliot states that he has been dead for two weeks. He also says he has forgotten about the “cry of gulls, deep sea swells and the profit and loss.”
The second stanza speaks of the way he died. He must have drowned because Eliot says, “a current under sea picked his bones.” He “passed the stages of his age and youth” in the water, he spent a lot of time out there. This part reinforces the title, Death by Water, and that there can sometimes be too much water.
This part of the poem is about what happens when there is too much water. In all the other parts, water is pure, and people need it to live. Here, it is the cause of death.
"Beware of death by drowning" - this section reinforces this warning, but what does it all mean?
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