We can tackle the powerful prologue by looking closely at re-occuring elements in this lengthy poem.
The basic paradox in this poem pitches the bodily description of a lonely aging bachelor (Time to turn back and descend the stair,/ With a bald spot in the middle of my hair) with the spiritual description of the human soul, the All-Ether that penetrates each body in a crumbling modernity (The yellow fog...and fell asleep). Modernity incarnates this indescribable, universal ether in various scenes of urban despair.
Eliot creates this paradox by assigning opposing senses to identical phrases (And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?") Likewise, different schemata attach to associated stanza. Stanza 4 references Godly ether, Stanza 5 references one life, but combining the senses reveals the Ether in man and the Man in the ether.
Through this paradoxical unity, the reader feels one with the poet and the ether of the speaker. Feeling this, he understands poetry.
Some meta-readings
"Let us go, you and I": The bachelor speaking to himself, the Ether speaking to Itself, Eliot calling the reader along
"Like a patient etherised upon a table": the bachelor is comfortably numb/drunk, the Soul is numbed by modernity, the reader is numb to prejudices when reading poetry
"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent": The bachelor navigates society like an argument, the city argues against spirituality, historicized reading is insidious
"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/ Let us go and make our visit."
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