Monday, March 03, 2008

LITTLE GIDDING

(No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')
T.S. Eliot
Excerpt from IV
____
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
Example
An excerpt from V
___
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

4 Comments:

Blogger mrs metaphor said...

T.S. Eliot quoting Julian of Norwich...this may serve as my oxygen tank this week.

8:28 AM

 
Blogger Steve said...

Whosits of Norwhat? I'm sorry. I'm just coming online to this whole poetry thing. :)

I figure until I have the guts to get my own out there, I'll bring somebody else's.

I love "We only live, only suspire, Consumed by either fire or fire."

8:36 AM

 
Blogger mrs metaphor said...

"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well" Julian of Norwich.

She was a medieval christian mystic and an "anchoress" of the church at Norwich. She wrote a work called "Divine Revelations of Love." She rocks...I mean, in a liturgical sense.

You chose a good one here though...I love this line, "And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate"

11:13 AM

 
Blogger Anon said...

Get a job, pot smoker.

8:27 PM

 

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