Four Quartets 2: East Coker Poem Rhyme Scheme

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T. S. Eliot

Four Quartets 2: East Coker Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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I	A
	-
In my beginning is my end In succession	B
Houses rise and fall crumble are extended	C
Are removed destroyed restored or in their place	D
Is an open field or a factory or a by pass	E
Old stone to new building old timber to new fires	F
Old fires to ashes and ashes to the earth	G
Which is already flesh fur and faeces	F
Bone of man and beast cornstalk and leaf	H
Houses live and die there is a time for building	I
And a time for living and for generation	B
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane	J
And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots	F
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto	K
	-
In my beginning is my end Now the light falls	F
Across the open field leaving the deep lane	J
Shuttered with branches dark in the afternoon	L
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes	F
And the deep lane insists on the direction	B
Into the village in the electric heat	M
Hypnotised In a warm haze the sultry light	N
Is absorbed not refracted by grey stone	O
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence	F
Wait for the early owl	P
	-
In that open field	Q
If you do not come too close if you do not come too close	F
On a summer midnight you can hear the music	R
Of the weak pipe and the little drum	S
And see them dancing around the bonfire	T
The association of man and woman	B
In daunsinge signifying matrimonie	B
A dignified and commodiois sacrament	U
Two and two necessarye coniunction	B
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm	V
Whiche betokeneth concorde Round and round the fire	T
Leaping through the flames or joined in circles	F
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter	T
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes	F
Earth feet loam feet lifted in country mirth	G
Mirth of those long since under earth	G
Nourishing the corn Keeping time	W
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing	I
As in their living in the living seasons	F
The time of the seasons and the constellations	F
The time of milking and the time of harvest	X
The time of the coupling of man and woman	B
And that of beasts Feet rising and falling	I
Eating and drinking Dung and death	Y
	-
Dawn points and another day	Z
Prepares for heat and silence Out at sea the dawn wind	A2
Wrinkles and slides I am here	B2
Or there or elsewhere In my beginning	I
	-
II	A
	-
What is the late November doing	I
With the disturbance of the spring	I
And creatures of the summer heat	M
And snowdrops writhing under feet	M
And hollyhocks that aim too high	A
Red into grey and tumble down	B
Late roses filled with early snow	B
Thunder rolled by the rolling stars	F
Simulates triumphal cars	F
Deployed in constellated wars	F
Scorpion fights against the Sun	B
Until the Sun and Moon go down	B
Comets weep and Leonids fly	A
Hunt the heavens and the plains	F
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring	I
The world to that destructive fire	T
Which burns before the ice cap reigns	F
	-
That was a way of putting it not very satisfactory	C2
A periphrastic study in a worn out poetical fashion	B
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle	D2
With words and meanings The poetry does not matter	T
It was not to start again what one had expected	C
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to	E2
Long hoped for calm the autumnal serenity	C2
And the wisdom of age Had they deceived us	F
Or deceived themselves the quiet voiced elders	F
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit	M
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude	M
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets	F
Useless in the darkness into which they peered	M
Or from which they turned their eyes There is it seems to us	F
At best only a limited value	E2
In the knowledge derived from experience	F
The knowledge imposes a pattern and falsifies	F
For the pattern is new in every moment	M
And every moment is a new and shocking	I
Valuation of all we have been We are only undeceived	M
Of that which deceiving could no longer harm	V
In the middle not only in the middle of the way	Z
But all the way in a dark wood in a bramble	D2
On the edge of a grimpen where is no secure foothold	M
And menaced by monsters fancy lights	F
Risking enchantment Do not let me hear	B2
Of the wisdom of old men but rather of their folly	C2
Their fear of fear and frenzy their fear of possession	B
Of belonging to another or to others or to God	M
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire	T
Is the wisdom of humility humility is endless	F
	-
The houses are all gone under the sea	C2
	-
The dancers are all gone under the hill	F2
	-
III	A
	-
O dark dark dark They all go into the dark	G2
The vacant interstellar spaces the vacant into the vacant	M
The captains merchant bankers eminent men of letters	F
The generous patrons of art the statesmen and the rulers	F
Distinguished civil servants chairmen of many committees	F
Industrial lords and petty contractors all go into the dark	G2
And dark the Sun and Moon and the Almanach de Gotha	Y
And the Stock Exchange Gazette the Directory of Directors	F
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action	B
And we all go with them into the silent funeral	D2
Nobody's funeral for there is no one to bury	C2
I said to my soul be still and let the dark come upon you	E2
Which shall be the darkness of God As in a theatre	T
The lights are extinguished for the scene to be changed	M
With a hollow rumble of wings with a movement of darkness on darkness	F
And we know that the hills and the trees the distant panorama	H2
And the bold imposing fa ccedil ade are all being rolled away	Z
Or as when an underground train in the tube stops too long between stations	F
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence	F
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen	B
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about	M
Or when under ether the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing	I
I said to my soul be still and wait without hope	I2
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing wait without love	J2
For love would be love of the wrong thing there is yet faith	Y
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting	I
Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought	M
So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing	I
Whisper of running streams and winter lightning	I
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry	C2
The laughter in the garden echoed ecstasy	C2
Not lost but requiring pointing to the agony	C2
Of death and birth	Y
	-
You say I am repeating	I
Something I have said before I shall say it again	B
Shall I say it again In order to arrive there	K2
To arrive where you are to get from where you are not	M
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy	C2
In order to arrive at what you do not know	B
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance	F
In order to possess what you do not possess	F
You must go by the way of dispossession	B
In order to arrive at what you are not	M
You must go through the way in which you are not	M
And what you do not know is the only thing you know	B
And what you own is what you do not own	B
And where you are is where you are not	M
	-
IV	J2
	-
The wounded surgeon plies the steel	L2
That questions the distempered part	M
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel	L2
The sharp compassion of the healer's art	M
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart	M
	-
Our only health is the disease	F
If we obey the dying nurse	F
Whose constant care is not to please	F
But to remind of our and Adam's curse	F
And that to be restored our sickness must grow worse	F
	-
The whole earth is our hospital	D2
Endowed by the ruined millionaire	K2
Wherein if we do well we shall	M2
Die of the absolute paternal care	K2
That will not leave us but prevents us everywhere	K2
	-
The chill ascends from feet to knees	F
The fever sings in mental wires	F
If to be warmed then I must freeze	F
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires	F
Of which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars	F
	-
The dripping blood our only drink	N2
The bloody flesh our only food	M
In spite of which we like to think	N2
That we are sound substantial flesh and blood	M
Again in spite of that we call this Friday good	M
	-
V	J2
	-
So here I am in the middle way having had twenty years	F
Twenty years largely wasted the years of l'entre deux guerres	F
Trying to use words and every attempt	M
Is a wholly new start and a different kind of failure	T
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words	F
For the thing one no longer has to say or the way in which	O2
One is no longer disposed to say it And so each venture	T
Is a new beginning a raid on the inarticulate	M
With shabby equipment always deteriorating	I
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling	I
Undisciplined squads of emotion And what there is to conquer	T
By strength and submission has already been discovered	M
Once or twice or several times by men whom one cannot hope	I2
To emulate but there is no competition	B
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost	M
And found and lost again and again and now under conditions	F
That seem unpropitious But perhaps neither gain nor loss	F
For us there is only the trying The rest is not our business	F
	-
Home is where one starts from As we grow older	T
The world becomes stranger the pattern more complicated	M
Of dead and living Not the intense moment	M
Isolated with no before and after	T
But a lifetime burning in every moment	M
And not the lifetime of one man only	J2
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered	M
There is a time for the evening under starlight	M
A time for the evening under lamplight	M
The evening with the photograph album	S
Love is most nearly itself	J2
When here and now cease to matter	T
Old men ought to be explorers	F
Here or there does not matter	T
We must be still and still moving	I
Into another intensity	M
For a further union a deeper communion	B
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation	B
The wave cry the wind cry the vast waters	F
Of the petrel and the porpoise In my end is my beginning	I