Alec Guinness reads Four Quartets by TS Eliot

Four Quartets this evening Alec Guinness reads Four Quartets by TS Eliot burnt Norton 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 unknown redeemable what might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation what might have been what has been 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 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 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 in the autumn heat through the vibrant air and the bird called in a response to the unheard music hidden in the shrubbery and the unseen I beam crossed for the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at there they where 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 brownej and the pool was filled with water out of sunlight and the lotus 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 go said the bird for the leaves were full of children hidden excitedly containing laughter go go go said the bird humankind cannot bear very much a reality time passed and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end which is always present garlic and sapphires in the mud clocked the bedded axletree the trilling wire in the blood sings below inveterate scars appeasing long-forgotten Wars the dance along the artery the circulation of the lymph our figured in the drift of stars ascends to summer in the tree we move above the moving tree in light upon the figured leaf and here upon the sudden floor below the bore hand and the bore pursue their pattern as before but reconciled among the stars at the still point of the turning world neither flesh nor fleshless neither from naught wards at the still point there the dances but neither arrest nor movement and do not call it fixity where past and future are gathered by the movement from more towards neither assent 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 since a white light still and moving air hey bong 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 you have the enchain Monteux past and future woven in the weakness of the changing body protects mankind from heaven and damnation which flesh cannot endure time passed 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 Arbor where the rain beat the moment in the drafty Church at smoke fall be remembered involved with past and future only through time time is conquered here is a place of disaffection time before and time after in a dim light neither daylight investing form with lucid stillness 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 now the plenitude nor they can say only a flicker over the strained time ridden faces distracted from distraction by distraction filled with fancies and empty of meaning to mid apathy with no concentration men and bits of paper quelled by the cold wind that blows before and after time wind in and out of unwholesome lungs before and time after irritation unhealthy souls into the faded air the top 'add driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London Hampstead and Clerkenwell Camden and Putney Highgate Primrose and Lud gate not here not here the darkness in this twittering world descend lower to send only into the world of Perpetual solitude world not world but that which is not world internal darkness deprivation and destitution of all property desiccation of the world of sense evacuation of the world of fancy in operon see of the world of spirit this is the one way and the other is the same not in movement but abstention from movement while the world moves in Appetit see on its metaled ways of time past and time future 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 clutch and cling chill fingers of you be curled down on us after the kingfishers wing has answered light to light and is silent the light is still at the still point of the turning world 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 can words or music reach the stillness as a Chinese jaw still moves perpetually in its stillness not the stillness of the violin while the note costs not that only but the coexistence 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 can sometimes break under the burden 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 is most attacked by voices of temptation the crying shadow in the funeral dance the loud lament of the disconsolate chimera the detail of the pattern is movement as in the figure of the tense tears desire itself is movement not in itself desirable love is itself unmoving only the cause and end of movement timeless and undesirable imitation between unbe and being sudden in a shaft of sunlight even while the dust moves there Rises the hidden laughter of children in the foliage quit now here now always ridiculous the waste sad time stretching before and after for quartets east cuckoo in my beginning is my end in succession houses rise and fall crumble our extended our remove destroyed restored or in their place is an open field or a factory or a bypass old stoned new buildings old timber new fires old fires to ashes and ashes to the earth which is already flesh fur and feces bone of man and beast corn stalk and leaf houses live and die there is a time for building and a time for living and for generation and a time for the wind to break the loosened pain and to shake the wainscot where the fieldmouse trots and to shake the tattered eras woven with a silent motto in my beginning is my end now the light falls across the open field leaving the deep plain shuttered with branches dark in the afternoon where you lean against a bank while a van passes and the deep plain insists on the direction into the village in the electric heat hypnotized in a warm haze the sultry light is absorbed not refracted by Greystone the dahlias sleep in the empty silence wait for the early owl in that open field if you do not come to close if you do not come to close on a summer midnight you can hear the music of the week pipe and the little drum and see them dancing around the bonfire the association of man and woman in dancing signifying matrimony a dignified and commodious sacrament to and to necessary conjunction holding each other by the hand or the arm which betokened ahthe Concorde round and round of the fire leaping through the flames or joined in circles rustically solemn or rustic laughter lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes ass feet low feet lifted in country mirth mirth of those long sins under earth nourishing the corn keeping time 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 and that of beasts feet rising and falling eating and drinking done and death dawn points and another day prepares for heat and silence how did see the dawn wind wrinkles and slides I am here or there or elsewhere in my beginning what is the late November doing with the disturbance of the spring and creatures of the summer heat and snowdrops writhing under feet and hollyhocks that aim too high read into grey and tumble down late roses filled with early snow Thunder rolled by the rolling stars simulates triumphal cars deployed in constellated Wars scorpion fights against the Sun until the Sun and Moon go down comet sweep and Leonids fly hunt the heavens and the plains world in a vortex that shall bring the world to that destructive fire which burns before the icecap reigns that was a way of putting it not very satisfactory a periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings the poetry does not matter it was not to start again what one had expected what was to be the value of the long looked forward to long hoped for calm the autumnal serenity and the wisdom of age had they deceived us or deceived themselves the quiet voiced elders bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit the serenity only a deliberate heavy Jude the wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets useless in the darkness into which they peered or from which they turned their eyes there is it seems to us at best only a limited value in the knowledge derived from experience the knowledge imposes a pattern and falsifies for the pattern is new in every moment in every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all we have been we are only undeceived of that which deceiving could no longer harm in the middle not only in the middle of the way but all the way in a dark wart in a bramble on the edge of a Grimpen where is no secure foothold and menaced by monsters fancy lights risking enchantment 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 the houses are all gone under the sea the dancers are all gone under the hill Oh dark dark dark they all go into the dark the vacant interstellar spaces the vacant into the vacant the captain's merchant bankers eminent men of letters the generous patrons of art the statesmen and the rulers distinguished civil servants chairmen of many committees Industrial lords and petty contractors all go into the dark and dark the Sun and Moon and the Almanac de Gotha and the Stock Exchange Gazette the directory of directors and cold the sense and lost the motive of action and we all go with them into the silent funeral nobody's funeral for there is no one to bury I said to my soul be still and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God as in a theater the lights are extinguished for the scene to be changed with a hollow rumble of wings with a movement of darkness on darkness and we know that the hills and the trees the distant panorama and the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away or as when an underground train in the tube stops to long between stations and the composition Rises and slowly fades into and you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about or when under ether the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing I said to my soul be still and wait without hope for hope would be hoped 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 you are not ready for thought so the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing whisper of running streams and winter lightning the wild time unseen and the wild strawberry the laughter in the garden echoed ecstasy not lost but requiring pointing to the agony of death and birth you say I am repeating something I have said before I shall say it again shall I say it again in order to arrive there to arrive where you are to get from where you are not you must go by a 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 disposition in order to arrive at what 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 the wounded surgeon plies the steel that questions the distemper'd part beneath the bleeding hands we feel the shock compassion of the healers art resolving the enigma of the fever chart our only health is the disease if we obey the dying nurse whose constant care is not to please but to remind of our and Adam's curse and that to be restored our sickness must grow worse the whole earth is our hospital endowed by the ruined millionaire wherein if we do well we shall die of the absolute paternal care that will not leave us but prevents us everywhere the chill ascends from feet to knees the fever sings in mental wires if to be warmed then I must freeze and quake in frigid purgatorial fires of which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars the dripping blood our only drink the bloody flesh our only food in spite of which we like to think that we are sound substantial flesh and blood again in spite of that we call this Friday good so here I am in the middle way having had twenty years twenty years largely wasted the years of LAN through de Guerre trying to learn to use words and every attempt is a wholly new start and a different kind of failure because one has only learnt to get the better of words for the thing one no longer has to say or the way in which one is no longer disposed to say it and so each venture is a new beginning a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling undisciplined squads of emotion and what there is to conquer by strength and Submission has already been discovered once or twice or several times by men whom one cannot hope to emulate but there is no competition 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 home is where one starts from as we grow older the world becomes stranger the pattern more complicated of dead dead living not the intense moment isolated with no before and after but a lifetime burning in every moment and not the lifetime of one man only but of old stones that cannot be deciphered there is a time for the evening under starlight a time for the evening under lamplight the evening with the photograph album love is most nearly itself when here and now ceased to matter old men ought to be explorers here and there does not matter we must be still and still moving into another intensity for a further Union a deeper communion through the dark cold and the empty desolation the wave cry the wind cry the vast waters of the petrol and the purpose in my end is my beginning for quartets the dry selves ages I do not know much about God's but I think that the river is a strong brown God sullen untamed and intractable patient to some degree at first recognized as a frontier useful untrustworthy as a conveyor of Commerce then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges the problem once solved the brown god is almost forgotten by the dwellers in cities ever however implacable keeping his seasons and rages destroy a reminder of what men choose to forget an honor and unpropitious oppose of the machine but waiting watching and waiting his rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom in the rankle anthis of the april doe yard in the smell of grapes on the autumn table and the evening circle in the winter Gaslight the river is within us and the sea is all about us the sea is the lands edge also the granite into which it reaches the beaches where it tosses its hints of earlier and other creation the starfish the hermit crab the whale's backbone the pools where it offers to our curiosity the more delicate algae and the sea anemone it tosses up our losses the torn Seine the shattered lobster pots the broken oar and the gear of foreign dead men the sea has many voices many gods and many voices the salt is on the Briar Rose the fog is in the fir trees the sea how land the sea help of different voices often together heard the wine in the rigging the Menace and caress of wave the bricks on water the distant wrote in the granite teeth and the wailing warning from the approaching headland are all sea voices and the heaving groaner rounded homewards and the seagull and under the oppression of the silent fog the tolling bell measures time not our time rung by the unhurried groundswell a time older than the time of chronometer x' older than time counted by anxious worried women lying awake calculating the future trying to unweave unwind level and piece together the past and the future between midnight and Dawn when the past is all deception the future futureless before the morning watch when time stops and time is never ending and the groundswell that is and was from the beginning clangs the bell where is there an end of it the soundless wailing a silent withering of autumn flowers dropping their petals and remaining motionless where is there an end to the drifting wreckage the prayer of the bone on the beach the unprepared of the calamitous Annunciation there is no end but addition the trailing consequence of further days and hours while emotion takes to itself the emotionless years of living among the breakage of what was believed in as the most reliable and therefore the fittest for renunciation there is the final addition the failing pride or resentment at failing powers the unattached devotion which might pass for devotion lists in a drifting boat with a slow leakage the silent listening to the undeniable clamor of the bell of the last and unsee ation where is the end of them the fisherman sailing into the winds tail where the fog towers we cannot think of a time that is Ocean Liz or of an ocean not littered with wastage or of a future that is not liable like the past to have no destination we have to think of them is forever bailing setting and hauling while the Northeast lies over shallow banks unchanging and erosion lists or drawing their money drying sales at dockage not as making a trip that will be unpayable for a hall that will not bear examination there is no end of it the voiceless whaling no end to the withering of withered flies to the movement of pain that is painless and motionless to the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage the bones prayer to death it's God only the hardly barely prayer bull prayer of the one Annunciation it seems as one becomes older that the past has another pattern and ceases to be a mere sequence or even development the latter two partial fallacy encouraged by superficial notions of evolution which becomes in the popular mind a means of disowning the past the moments of happiness not the sense of well-being fruition fulfillment security or affection or even a very good dinner but the sudden illumination we had the experience but missed the meaning and approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form beyond any meaning we can assign to happiness I have said before that the past experience revived in the meaning is not the experience of one life only but of many generations not forgetting something that is probably quite ineffable the back would look behind the assurance of recorded history the back would half look over the shoulder towards the primitive terror now we come to discover that the moments of agony whether or not due to misunderstanding having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things is not in question are likewise permanent with such permanence as time has we appreciate this better in the agony of others nearly experienced involving ourselves than in our own for our own past is covered by the currents of action but the torment of others remains an experienced unqualified unworn by subsequent attrition people change and smile but the agony abides time the destroyer is time the preserver like the river with its cargo of dead Negroes cows and chicken coops the bitter apple and the bite in the Apple and the ragged rock in the Restless waters waves wash over it fogs conceal it on a halcyon day it is merely a monument in navigable weather it is always a sea mark to lay a course by but in the summer season or the sudden fury is what it always was I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant among other things are one way of putting the same thing that the future is a faded song a royal rose or a lavender spray of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened and the way up is the way down the way forward is the way back you cannot face it steadily but this thing is sure that time is no healer the patient is no longer here when the train starts and the passengers are settled to fruit periodicals and business letters and those who saw them off have left the platform their faces relax from grief into relief to the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours their forward travelers not escaping from the past into different lives or into any future you are not the same people who left that station or who will arrive at any terminus while the narrowing rails slide together behind you and on the deck of the drumming liner watching the furrow that widens behind you you shall not think the past is finished or the future is before us at nightfall in the rigging and the aerial is a voice discounting though not to the ear the murmuring shell of time and not any language fair forward you who think that you are voyaging you are not those who saw the harbour receding all those who will disembark here between the hither and the father shore while time is withdrawn consider the future and the past with an equal mind at the moment which is not of action or inaction you can receive this on whatever sphere of being the mind of a man may be intent at the time of death that is the one action and the time of death is every moment which shall fructify in the lives of others and do not think of the fruit of action fare forward overages o semen you who come to ports and you whose bodies will suffer the trial and judgment of the sea or whatever event this is your real destination so Krishna as when he had Mohnish Arjuna on the field of battle not farewell but fair forward voyagers lady who shrine stands on the promontory pray for all those who are in ships those whose business has to do with fish and those concerned with every lawful traffic and those who conduct them repeat a prayer also on behalf of women who have seen their sons or husbands setting forth and not returning philia dell to Ophelia o Queen of Heaven also pray for those who where in ships and ended their voyage on the sand in the Seas lips or in the dark throat which will not reject them or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bells perpetual Angelus to communicate with Mars converse with spirits to report the behavior of the sea monster described the horoscope her reciprocate or scry observe disease and signatures evoke biography from the wrinkles of the palm and tragedy from fingers release omens by sortilège or tea leaves riddle the inevitable with playing cards fiddle with pentagrams or barbiturate acids or de-sect the recurrent image into preconscious terrors to explore the womb or two more dreams all these are usual pastimes and drugs and features of the press and always will be some of them especially when there is distress of nations and perplexity whether on the shores of Asia or in the edgeware Road men's curiosities such as past and future and clings to that dimension but to apprehend the point of intersection of the timeless with time is an occupation for the saint no occupation either but something given and taken in a lifetime's death in love harder and selflessness and self surrender 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 time unseen or the winter lightning 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 the hint half guessed the gift half understood is incarnation here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual here the past and future are conquered and reconciled where action where otherwise movement of that which is only moved and has in it no source of movement driven by demonic sonic powers and right action is freedom from past and future also for most of us this is the aim never here to be realized who are only undefeated because we have gone on trying we contented the last if our temporal reversion nourish not too far from the yew tree the life of significant soil for quartets little giddy midwinter Springs its own season sempiternal though sudden towards sundown suspended in time between pole and Tropic when the short day is brightest with frost and fire the brief Sun flames the ice on pond and ditches in windlass cold that is the hearts heat reflecting in a watery mirror a glare that his blindness in the early afternoon and glow more intense than blaze of branch saw brassiere stirs the dumb spirit no wind but Pentecostal fire in the dark time of the year between melting and freezing the soul SAP Quivers there is no earth smell or smell of living thing this is the spring time but not in times covenant now the hedgerow is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom of snow blow more sudden than that of summer neither budding nor fading not in the scheme of generation where is the summer the unimaginable zero summer if you came this way taking the route you would be likely to take from the place it would be likely to come from if you came this way in May time you would find the hedges white again in May with voluptuous sweetness it would be the same at the end of the journey if you came at night like a broken King if you came by day not knowing what you came for it would be the same when you leave the rough Road and turn behind the pigsty to the dull facade and the tombstone and what you thought you came for is only a shell the husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled if at all either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end you figured and is altered in fulfillment there are other places which also are the worlds end some of the see jaws or over a darkly in a desert or a city but this is the nearest in place and time now and in England if you came this way taking any route starting from anywhere at any time or at any season it would always be the same you would have to put off sense a notion you are not here to verify instruct your self 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 and what the dead had no speech for when living they can tell you being dead the communication of the Dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living here the intersection of the timeless moment is England and nowhere never and always ash on an old man's sleeve is all the ash the burnt roses leave dust in the air suspended marks the place where a story ended Dustin breathed was a house the wall the wainscot and the mouse the death of hope and despair this is the death of air there are flood and growth over the eyes and in the mouth dead water and dead Sam contending for the upper hand the parched eviscerate soil gapes of the vanity of toil laughs without mirth this is the death of earth water and fire succeed the town the posture and the weed water and fire derived the sacrifice that we denied water and fire shall rot the mad foundations we forgot of sanctuary and choir this is the death of water and fire in the uncertain are before the morning near the ending of interminable night at the recurrent end of the unending after the dark dove with a flickering tongue had passed below the horizon of his homing while the dead leaves still rattled on like tin over the ash felt where no other sound was between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking loitering and hurried as if blown towards me like the metal leaves before the urban dawn wind done no resisting and as I fixed upon the downturned face that pointed scrutiny with which we challenged the first met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master whom I had known forgotten half recalled both one and many in the brown baked features the eyes of a familiar compound ghost both intimate and unidentifiable so I assumed a double part and cried and heard another's voice cry what are you here although we were not I was still the same knowing myself he had being someone other and he a face still forming yet the words sufficed to compel the recognition they proceeded and so compliant to the common wind too strange to each other for misunderstanding in Concord at this intersection tie of meeting nowhere no before and after we trod the pavement in a dead patrol I said the wonder that I feel is easy yet eases cause of wonder therefore speak I may not comprehend may not remember and he I am NOT eager to rehearse my thought and theory which you have forgotten these things have served their purpose let them be so with your own and pray they be forgiven by others as I pray you to forgive both bad and good last season's fruit is eaten and the full-fed beasts shall kick the empty pail for last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice but as the passage now presents no hindrance to the spirit unappeased and petty green between two worlds become much like each other so I find words I never thought to speak in streets I never thought I should revisit when I left my body on a distant Shore since our concern was speech and speech impelled us to purify the dialect of the tribe and urge the mind to after sight and foresight 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 reenactment of all that you have done and being the shame of motives later 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 honor stains from wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit proceeds unless restored by that refining fire where you must move in measure like a dancer the day was breaking in the disfigured Street he left me with a kind of valediction and faded on the blowing of the horn there are three conditions which often look alike he had difficult lately flourish in the same hedgerow attachment to self and two things and two persons detachment from self and from things and from persons and growing between them indifference which resembles the others as death resembles life being between two lives unflattering between the live and the dead metal this is the use of memory for liberation not less of love but expanding of love beyond desire and so liberation from the future as well as the past thus love of a country begins as attachment to our own field of action and comes to find that action of little importance though never indifferent history may be servitude history may be freedom see now they vanish the faces and places with the self which as it could love them to become renewed to transfigured in another pattern sin is be holy but all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well if I think again of this place and of people not wholly commendable of no immediate kin nor kindness but some of peculiar genius all touched by a common genius United in the strife which divided them if I think of a king at nightfall of three men and more on the scaffold and a few who died forgotten in other places here and and of one who died blind and quiet why should we celebrate these dead men more than the dying it is not to ring the bell backward noise it an incantation to summon the spectre of a rose we cannot revive old factions we cannot restore old policies or follow an antique drum these men and those who oppose them and those whom they opposed accept the constitution of silence and are folded in a single party whatever we inherit from the fortunate we have taken from the defeated what they had to leave us a symbol a symbol perfected in death and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well by the purification of the motive in the ground of our beseeching the dove descending bricks the air with flame of incandescent terror of which the tongues declare the one discharged from sin and error the only hope for else despair lies in the choice of pyre or pyre to be redeemed from fire by fire 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 sassoon by either fire or fire 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 and 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 and epitaph and any action is a step to the block to the fire down the sea's throat or to any legible stone and that is where we start we die with the die see they depart and we go with them we are born with the dead see they return and bring us with them the moment of the rose and the moment of the you tree are of equal duration a people without history is not redeemed from time for history is a pattern of timeless moments so while the light fails on a winter's afternoon in a secluded chapel history is now and England with the drawing of this love than the voice of this calling 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 through the unknown remembered gate when the last of Earth left to discover is that which was the beginning at the source of the longest river the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple tree not known because not looked for but heard half heard in the stillness between two waves of the sea quick now here now always a condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well when the tongues of flame are in folded into the crowns not a fire and the fire and the rose are one you

Channel: Tom Robinson

Views: 159,935

Rating: 4.8669 out of 5

Keywords: Four Quartets, TS Eliot, Poetry (Literary Genre), Spoken Word (Musical Genre), Alec Guinness (Film Actor), Burnt Norton, East Coker, East Coker (English Civil Parish), The Dry Salvages, Little Gidding

Id: ccupYGfiDEw

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2015