T.S. Eliot and The Four Quartets

From Burnt Norton


II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
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
But reconciled among the stars.
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,
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,
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
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,
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,
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.

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• Poetry
• T.S.
• Eliot
• Burnt
• Norton
• Time
• Conciousness

[medicinesocks]

thanks again, you bodhisatva you.

exquisite reading, good old t.s.. had an 11th grade english teacher who introduced us to him by reading us the love song of j alfred prufrock, and the wasteland... may have been over our young heads but our teacher, peter fish, had a throw em in see if they sink or swim approach to teaching literature.

enjoyed your choice of music too

[Idlinfarm]

Oh Medicinesocks, I'd like to know the story of your life. You give little bits here and there. Are we like Emily?

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

Keep on.

[nordicsky]

Time... now there's the problem, if only I had enough time, time to go back and read TS Elliot.

Thanks to your fine reading, I will make time, because I think this poetry is transcendent.

Regards, Peter

[Idlinfarm]

Yes. Thanks.

[ellyunfortunetly]

awesome. I've never delved enough into T.S. Elliot, I feel now that I've made a great error. To google! :o)

Awesome reading Idlinfarm!

[Idlinfarm]

Maybe you can find Eliot reading. He is superb.

[planes100]

love your videos cheers from australia

[frippp66]

thanks - i loved hearing you read this

[MarasVeil]

A theme which follows me ever these days.

Thank you for the lovely reading. It a poem that I treasure very much.

[musimengalir]

Poem and love always together, and life! Thank

[9macrina9]

Thank you so very much for reading this! You are a dear! sincerely, Mary

[brychar66]

Nice reading. I listened to this directly after watching your satori poem and it struck me (pretty obvious I suppose) that this is Eliot's definition of satori.