To whom I owe the leaping delightThat quickens my senses in our wakingtimeAnd the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,the breathing in unison. Of lovers whose bodies smell of each otherWho think the same thoughts without need of…
The children who explored the brook and foundA desert island with a sandy cove(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground, For here the water buffalo may rove,The kinkajou, the mungabey, aboundIn the dark jungle of a mango grove, And shadowy…
A man’s destination is his own village, His own fire, and his wife’s cooking; To sit in front of his own door at sunset And see his grandson, and his neighbour’s grandson Playing in the dust together. Scarred but secure, he has many memories Which…
Not the expression of collective emotionImperfectly reflected in the daily papers.Where is the point at which the merely individualExplosion breaks In the path of an action merely typicalTo create the universal, originate a symbolOut of the impact — This is…
Let these memorials built of stone — music’senduring instrument, of many centuries ofpatient cultivation of the earth, of Englishverse be joined with the memory of this defence ofthe islands and the memory of those appointed to the greyships — battleship,…
(No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’) I Midwinter spring is its own seasonSempiternal though sodden towards sundown,Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,In…
(No. 3 of ‘Four Quartets’) (The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a small group of rocks,with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.Groaner: a whistling buoy.) I I do not know much about gods;…
(No. 2 of ‘Four Quartets’) I In my beginning is my end. In successionHouses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their placeIs an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.Old stone to new building,…
(No. 1 of ‘Four Quartets’) Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time future,And time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in…
I The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.O perpetual revolution of configured stars,O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!The endless cycle of idea and action,Endless…
