Excerpts from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" [Part III]

"Little Gidding"

 

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic…

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant.

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

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.

For last year's words belong to last year's language 
And next year's words await another voice.

[via]

 

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.

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.

[via]

Light 'em up

7.4.11

Under my covers before the sky lit up, dreaming of the journey I would take the next day. A day of goodbyes & tears, but also of intense anticipation. 

7.4.12

Driving along the 522 headed back towards Seattle, witnessing bombastic celebrations to my right & my left. Just graduating. The pink tinged sky & fireworks pointed towards an encouraging unknown. 

7.14.13

Watching 180* of fireworks reflect off Lake Wahington. They might as well be reflecting off my soul. The fireworks have led me somewhere very different than I had imagined two years ago. But still, they point towards shimmering future. 

Well, I think I did pretty good in Powell's today. I said "no" to quite a few tempting volumes, but I got a few fun ones. I purchased:

• The Metamorphosis, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
• A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• and Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl (I love the film so much and was ashamed I'd never read the book... but now I have a fun afternoon to look forward to sometime in the near future)

I also got this incredible journal! It's cloth-bound and has a famous 1920's cover of Pride and Prejudice printed on the front. I have a book bag from Bath with the same cover and I just love it. Plus I thought this would be an appropriate journal for the next few months as I will be working on my longest Austen paper to-date. This should keep my motivation high and my thoughts flowing.

[from Out of Print]

Tomorrow I head back home, but it has been so relaxing to leave routine and the familiar, to have the time and space to fall in love with literature all over again, to allow the Lord to awaken and re-awaken beautiful things He placed inside me. It has just been a special time.


Well, I'm going to go curl up by the fire with A Severe Mercy for a while, but I hope the rest of you have a lovely evening =)