The Four Quartets
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Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot is a work of four poems: Burnt Norton (1935), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941), and Little Gidding (1942) which has been acclaimed by many as one of the greatest works of mystical poetry ever written, and as certainly one of the greatest poetic compositions of the twentieth century. It requires little to appreciate the beauty of the words and the mysteries it evokes, but a great deal of knowlege and reflection to adequately appreciate many of the mystical and historical allusions that it makes. These selections are but excerpts that indicate the worth of the whole.
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[edit] Burnt Norton (1935)
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
- Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past. (I)
- Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. (I)
Cannot bear very much reality.
- Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (I)
- At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. (II)
[edit] East Coker (1940)
- In my beginning is my end. (I)
- And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. (V)
[edit] Little Gidding (1942)
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
- And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. (I)
- Speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight. (II)
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- 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. (V)
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
- And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. (V)
[edit] External Links
- The Four Quartets Online
- Harcourt Publishers of Eliot's Poetry
- Complete Works at Amazon & Four Quartets at Amazon, with reviews
