T.S Eliot Quote

[stlukesguild]

As I'm getting to be an old man, I'll have to drill it into me.

That and the Four Quartets.

[quasimodo1]

Old man wise, unfortunately, believe I have seniority. If I ever find myself at an aarp meeting, well, desperate measures will have to be taken.

[Virgil]

Here's another that frequently comes to mind:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

[stlukesguild]

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Toward the door we never opened
In the rose-garden.

Burnt Norton- The Four Quartets

[quasimodo1]

That quote is like a haunting. Who can read history the same after Eliot's take. I guess the one part of his work that I never experienced was his "Cats" play and other drama. Wonder what was actually missed.

[Virgil]

I used to have this as a signature at one 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.

-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

[stlukesguild]

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'

Little Gidding-The Four Quartets

[quasimodo1]

Another fantastic mantra, in the truest eastern sense. Who really compares with Eliot this way? Arnold J. Toynbee, and he's no poet. How about.......Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking....Ash Wensday.

[quasimodo1]

I was refering to Virgil's quote. Stlukesguild's is almost a positive sermon, yes? And I hate sermons. Wait, what happened to it. I wonder if Janine is up and about, or if she even has interest in Eliot.

[quasimodo1]

Remembering "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"....The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

[stlukesguild]

Another fantastic mantra, in the truest eastern sense. Who really compares with Eliot this way?

Perhaps Stevens... who certainly was every bit the poet as Eliot:

Light the first light of evening as in a room
In which we rest, and for small reason, think
The world imagined the ultimate good...

We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens- from-Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

[Virgil]

I was refering to Virgil's quote. Stlukesguild's is almost a positive sermon, yes? And I hate sermons. Wait, what happened to it. I wonder if Janine is up and about, or if she even has interest in Eliot.

Her computer crashed the other day Quasi and other than at the library she has not been on. I don't think she has an interest in Eliot.

On another note, I've wanted to do a thread on The Four Quartets. I wonder if there is any interest. But I'm so tied up now it would probably be in the winter.

[Virgil]

Another fantastic mantra, in the truest eastern sense. Who really compares with Eliot this way?

Perhaps Stevens... who certainly was every bit the poet as Eliot:

Light the first light of evening as in a room
In which we rest, and for small reason, think
The world imagined the ultimate good...

We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens- from-Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Oh I love that poem by Stevens StLukes.

[quasimodo1]

Stevens is equal or better, if its not apples, oranges. He has the same kind of intensity and range. Wish I could remember more of him; is he more complex? Linguistically?

[quasimodo1]

Janine has crashed computer; thought she just acquired a new one...like two months ago. The Four Quartets could be done...crazy time of year, though.