Eliot may have had in mind two lines from the poem "Danny Deever"
(1892) by Rudyard Kipling. Deever, a British soldier, is executed in front of his regiment for killing another comrade:
" 'What's that that whimpers over'ead?' said Files-on-Parade;
'It's Danny's soul that's passin' now,' the Colour-Sergeant said."
Eliot referred to this "remarkable" poem in his Introduction to A CHOICE OF KIPLING'S VERSE (1941), quoting these lines and commenting that Kipling's choice of the word "whimpers" is "exactly right."
The "whimper" may also combine an allusive reference to Dante, suggesting the cry of a baby, the new-born leaving one world to enter another, just as at the end of the PURGATORIO, Dante is leaving the sinful, fallen world in the presence of Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise. In XXX, 43 ff. and XXXI, 64 ff., he stands before her, shamed and conscience-stricken, repentant, and silent, like a child before a stern mother.