The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

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The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 14

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

The LORD who created must wish us to create

  30

  And employ our creation again in His service

  Which is already His service in creating.

  For Man is joined spirit and body,

  And therefore must serve as spirit and body.

  Visible and invisible, two worlds meet in Man;

  35

  Visible and invisible must meet in His Temple;

  You must not deny the body.

  Now you shall see the Temple completed:

  After much striving, after many obstacles;

  For the work of creation is never without travail;

  40

  The formed stone, the visible crucifix,

  The dressed altar, the lifting light,

  Light

  Light

  The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

  [Commentary I 878 · Textual History II 478]

  X

  You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned

  By one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to GOD.

  It is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill

  In a world confused and dark and disturbed by portents of fear.

  5

  And what shall we say of the future? Is one church all we can build?

  Or shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?

  The great snake lies ever half awake, at the bottom of the pit of the world, curled

  In folds of himself until he awakens in hunger and moving his head to right and to left prepares for his hour to devour.

  But the Mystery of Iniquity is a pit too deep for mortal eyes to plumb. Come

  10

  Ye out from among those who prize the serpent’s golden eyes,

  The worshippers, self-given sacrifice of the snake. Take

  Your way and be ye separate.

  Be not too curious of Good and Evil;

  Seek not to count the future waves of Time;

  15

  But be ye satisfied that you have light

  Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

  O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!

  Too bright for mortal vision.

  O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;

  20

  The eastern light our spires touch at morning,

  The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,

  The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,

  Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,

  Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.

  25

  O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!

  <

  [Commentary I 879–80 · Textual History II 478–80]

  We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled,

  The light of altar and of sanctuary;

  Small lights of those who meditate at midnight

  And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows

  30

  And light reflected from the polished stone,

  The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.

  Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward

  And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.

  We see the light but see not whence it comes.

  35

  O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

  In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.

  We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.

  We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,

  Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.

  40

  And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;

  Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.

  Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.

  We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.

  And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.

  45

  And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

  O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!

  [Commentary I 880 · Textual History II 480–81]

  Four Quartets

  τοῦ λόγου δ’ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοί ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν.

  I. p. 77. Fr. 2.

  ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή.

  I. p. 89. Fr. 60.

  Diels: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Herakleitos).

  Burnt Norton

  I

  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

  5

  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

  10

  Point to one end, which is always present.

  Footfalls echo in the memory

  Down the passage which we did not take

  Towards the door we never opened

  Into the rose-garden. My words echo

  Thus, in your mind.

  15

  But to what purpose

  Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

  I do not know.

  Other echoes

  Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

  Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

  20

  Round the corner. Through the first gate,

  Into our first world, shall we follow

  The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

  There they were, dignified, invisible,

  Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

  25

  In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

  And the bird called, in response to

  The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

  [Commentary I 903–911 · Textual History II 486–88]

  And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

  Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

  30

  There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

  So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,

  Along the empty alley, into the box circle,

  To look down into the drained pool.

  Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,

  35

  And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,

  And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,

  The surface glittered out of heart of light,

  And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

  Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

  40

  Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

  Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

  Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

  Cannot bear very much reality.

  Time past and time future

  45

  What might have been and what has been

  Point to one end, which is always present.

  II

  Garlic and sapphires in the mud

  Clot the bedded axle-tree.

  The trilling wire in the blood

  Sings below inveterate scars

  5

  Appeasing long forgotten wars.

  The dance along the artery

  The circulation of the lymph

  Are figured in the drift of stars

  Ascen
d to summer in the tree

  10

  We move above the moving tree

  In light upon the figured leaf

  And hear upon the sodden floor

  Below, the boarhound and the boar

  Pursue their pattern as before

  15

  But reconciled among the stars.

  [Commentary I 911–16 · Textual History II 488–89]

  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,

  20

  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.

  The inner freedom from the practical desire,

  25

  The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

  And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

  By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

  Erhebung without motion, concentration

  Without elimination, both a new world

  30

  And the old made explicit, understood

  In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

  The resolution of its partial horror.

  Yet the enchainment of past and future

  Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

  35

  Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

  Which flesh cannot endure.

  Time past and time future

  Allow but a little consciousness.

  To be conscious is not to be in time

  But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

  40

  The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

  The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

  Be remembered; involved with past and future.

  Only through time time is conquered.

  [Commentary I 916–17 · Textual History II 489]

  III

  Here is a place of disaffection

  Time before and time after

  In a dim light: neither daylight

  Investing form with lucid stillness

  5

  Turning shadow into transient beauty

  With slow rotation suggesting permanence

  Nor darkness to purify the soul

  Emptying the sensual with deprivation

  Cleansing affection from the temporal.

  10

  Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker

  Over the strained time-ridden faces

  Distracted from distraction by distraction

  Filled with fancies and empty of meaning

  Tumid apathy with no concentration

  15

  Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind

  That blows before and after time,

  Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs

  Time before and time after.

  Eructation of unhealthy souls

  20

  Into the faded air, the torpid

  Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,

  Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,

  Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here

  Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

  25

  Descend lower, descend only

  Into the world of perpetual solitude,

  World not world, but that which is not world,

  Internal darkness, deprivation

  And destitution of all property,

  30

  Desiccation of the world of sense,

  Evacuation of the world of fancy,

  Inoperancy of the world of spirit;

  This is the one way, and the other

  Is the same, not in movement

  35

  But abstention from movement; while the world moves

  In appetency, on its metalled ways

  Of time past and time future.

  [Commentary I 917–19 · Textual History II 489]

  IV

  Time and the bell have buried the day,

  The black cloud carries the sun away.

  Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis

  Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray

  5

  Clutch and cling?

  Chill

  Fingers of yew be curled

  Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing

  Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still

  10

  At the still point of the turning world.

  V

  Words move, music moves

  Only in time; but that which is only living

  Can only die. Words, after speech, reach

  Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

  5

  Can words or music reach

  The stillness, as a Chinese jar still

  Moves perpetually in its stillness.

  Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,

  Not that only, but the co-existence,

  10

  Or say that the end precedes the beginning,

  And the end and the beginning were always there

  Before the beginning and after the end.

  And all is always now. Words strain,

  Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

  15

  Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

  Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

  Will not stay still. Shrieking voices

  Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,

  Always assail them. The Word in the desert

  20

  Is most attacked by voices of temptation,

  The crying shadow in the funeral dance,

  The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

  [Commentary I 919–22 · Textual History II 489–90]

  The detail of the pattern is movement,

  As in the figure of the ten stairs.

  25

  Desire itself is movement

  Not in itself desirable;

  Love is itself unmoving,

  Only the cause and end of movement,

  Timeless, and undesiring

  30

  Except in the aspect of time

  Caught in the form of limitation

  Between un-being and being.

  Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

  Even while the dust moves

  35

  There rises the hidden laughter

  Of children in the foliage

  Quick now, here, now, always—

  Ridiculous the waste sad time

  Stretching before and after.

  [Commentary I 922–24 · Textual History II 490]

  East Coker

  I

  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.

  5

  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

  10

  And a time for living and for 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.

  In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls


  15

  Across the open field, leaving the deep lane

  Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,

  Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,

  And the deep lane insists on the direction

  Into the village, in the electric heat

  20

  Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light

  Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.

  The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.

  Wait for the early owl.

  [Commentary I 925–32 · Textual History II 491–95]

  In that open field

  If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,

  25

  On a summer midnight, you can hear the music

  Of the weak pipe and the little drum

  And see them dancing around the bonfire

  The association of man and woman

  In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—

  30

  A dignified and commodious sacrament.

  Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

  Holding eche other by the hand or the arm

  Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire

  Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,

  35

  Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter

  Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,

  Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth

  Mirth of those long since under earth

  Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,

  40

  Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

  As in their living in the living seasons

  The time of the seasons and the constellations

  The time of milking and the time of harvest

  The time of the coupling of man and woman

  45

  And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.

  Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

  Dawn points, and another day

  Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind

  Wrinkles and slides. I am here

  50

  Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

  II

  What is the late November doing

  With the disturbance of the spring

  And creatures of the summer heat,

 

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