Symbol Analysis
Changes in light indicate changes in the poem. In stanza 1, we end with "and then the lighting of the lamps" (13) which is set apart from the rest of the stanza and moves us from the dark of the street to inner rooms. Eliot again uses light to signal change in stanza 2, when hands raise "dingy shades" and it turns from night back to day at the end of the stanza. It's in stanza 3, though, where light plays a bigger role than just changing the scene. When light "creeps" up the shutters at the end of a long, restless night, it doesn't actually bring relief—only visions of the dirty street outside.