THE FOUR QUARTETS

T. S. Eliot

If there is a single poem that draws me back into its folds year after year, it is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, The Four Quartets.  I go there in times of deep questioning, knowing that I will always find solace; I go there when I think that I have found answers, knowing that my answers will be tested and destroyed if false; I go there for the sheer music and arrangement of words that prod, delight, and challenge me to pay attention to the reality — not the ideal — of my life.

From my perspective, The Four Quartets is essentially the journal of a questing soul.  In words  that delight as much as they confound, the poem speaks to those questions that lurk silently in every human heart:  What are the unmitigated truths of our lives?  Is there anything that we can rely upon?  What are the consequences of denying our authenticity and living lives designed by others?  Can we trust the wisdom of the wisdom-givers?  How do we find peace in a spinning world?  How do we confront the impermanence of everything, including not only our lives, but the present moment?  What shall we do with the autumn of life?  Is there anything that is eternal, beyond the realm of time?

The poem is too long to quote in full.  I have chosen a few excerpts, however, that offer a small glimpse into the mind and razor-sharp intellect of Eliot.  I would be interested in knowing if any of you discover, as I have, something in these words or images that resonates with your own lives.

Each change in color represents a separate excerpt. Enjoy!

The Four Quartets

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

At the still point of the turning world.  
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, 
there the dance is . . .

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time . . . 


In my beginning is my end.  In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.


Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire 
Is the wisdom of humility; humility is endless.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for your are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by the way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know,
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess,
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at where you are not,
You must go through the way in which you are not,
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.  But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving . . .

We had the experience but missed the meaning.

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter  lightening
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.  These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses: and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action.

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

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.

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.

Dreamfields