Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEFGEHEEIJKELBIBME NOLPQRIESTEIUQVFWRKX NEBYARZEBIIBIA2B2 A C2C2D2D2E2E2EE F2F2G2G2H2H2F2F2 I2I2J2J2K2K2EE IL2IM2IN2O2P2I2Q2IR2 S2IET2U2V2H2J2 W2EX2Y2Z2IKEH2RI A3BRBB3BH2C3D3E3F3EI G3EQH3L2I3J3K3QL3EI3 BM3A2W2QN3O3P3Q3E GBB A IEA2E3R3BEIBEBE3S3T3 U3B Q3XH2R2H2QQQU3H2V3BW 3Q3X3IVBP2Y3Z3LU3A4E 3EQ3D2H2F2XH2B3I B3 EEEEEEE B3W2B3W2B3EE B3 B4IB2C4U2QBB3IEIBD4E 4IU3F4U3B3B3BG4H2X I BID2KX3EIEH2B3EQB3B2 B3IXH2D2EBI | A |
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Midwinter spring is its own season | B |
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown | C |
Suspended in time between pole and tropic | D |
When the short day is brightest with frost and fire | E |
The brief sun flames the ice on pond and ditches | F |
In windless cold that is the heart's heat | G |
Reflecting in a watery mirror | E |
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon | H |
And glow more intense than blaze of branch or brazier | E |
Stirs the dumb spirit no wind but pentecostal fire | E |
In the dark time of the year Between melting and freezing | I |
The soul's sap quivers There is no earth smell | J |
Or smell of living thing This is the spring time | K |
But not in time's covenant Now the hedgerow | E |
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom | L |
Of snow a bloom more sudden | B |
Than that of summer neither budding nor fading | I |
Not in the scheme of generation | B |
Where is the summer the unimaginable | M |
Zero summer | E |
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If you came this way | N |
Taking the route you would be likely to take | O |
From the place you would be likely to come from | L |
If you came this way in may time you would find the hedges | P |
White again in May with voluptuary sweetness | Q |
It would be the same at the end of the journey | R |
If you came at night like a broken king | I |
If you came by day not knowing what you came for | E |
It would be the same when you leave the rough road | S |
And turn behind the pig sty to the dull facade | T |
And the tombstone And what you thought you came for | E |
Is only a shell a husk of meaning | I |
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled | U |
If at all Either you had no purpose | Q |
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured | V |
And is altered in fulfilment There are other places | F |
Which also are the world's end some at the sea jaws | W |
Or over a dark lake in a desert or a city | R |
But this is the nearest in place and time | K |
Now and in England | X |
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If you came this way | N |
Taking any route starting from anywhere | E |
At any time or at any season | B |
It would always be the same you would have to put off | Y |
Sense and notion You are not here to verify | A |
Instruct yourself or inform curiosity | R |
Or carry report You are here to kneel | Z |
Where prayer has been valid And prayer is more | E |
Than an order of words the conscious occupation | B |
Of the praying mind or the sound of the voice praying | I |
And what the dead had no speech for when living | I |
They can tell you being dead the communication | B |
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living | I |
Here the intersection of the timeless moment | A2 |
Is England and nowhere Never and always | B2 |
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II | A |
- | |
Ash on and old man's sleeve | C2 |
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave | C2 |
Dust in the air suspended | D2 |
Marks the place where a story ended | D2 |
Dust inbreathed was a house | E2 |
The walls the wainscot and the mouse | E2 |
The death of hope and despair | E |
This is the death of air | E |
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There are flood and drouth | F2 |
Over the eyes and in the mouth | F2 |
Dead water and dead sand | G2 |
Contending for the upper hand | G2 |
The parched eviscerate soil | H2 |
Gapes at the vanity of toil | H2 |
Laughs without mirth | F2 |
This is the death of earth | F2 |
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Water and fire succeed | I2 |
The town the pasture and the weed | I2 |
Water and fire deride | J2 |
The sacrifice that we denied | J2 |
Water and fire shall rot | K2 |
The marred foundations we forgot | K2 |
Of sanctuary and choir | E |
This is the death of water and fire | E |
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In the uncertain hour before the morning | I |
Near the ending of interminable night | L2 |
At the recurrent end of the unending | I |
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue | M2 |
Had passed below the horizon of his homing | I |
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin | N2 |
Over the asphalt where no other sound was | O2 |
Between three districts whence the smoke arose | P2 |
I met one walking loitering and hurried | I2 |
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves | Q2 |
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting | I |
And as I fixed upon the down turned face | R2 |
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge | S2 |
The first met stranger in the waning dusk | I |
I caught the sudden look of some dead master | E |
Whom I had known forgotten half recalled | T2 |
Both one and many in the brown baked features | U2 |
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost | V2 |
Both intimate and unidentifiable | H2 |
So I assumed a double part and cried | J2 |
And heard another's voice cry 'What are you here ' | - |
Although we were not I was still the same | W2 |
Knowing myself yet being someone other | E |
And he a face still forming yet the words sufficed | X2 |
To compel the recognition they preceded | Y2 |
And so compliant to the common wind | Z2 |
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding | I |
In concord at this intersection time | K |
Of meeting nowhere no before and after | E |
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol | H2 |
I said 'The wonder that I feel is easy | R |
Yet ease is cause of wonder Therefore speak | I |
I may not comprehend may not remember ' | - |
And he 'I am not eager to rehearse | A3 |
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten | B |
These things have served their purpose let them be | R |
So with your own and pray they be forgiven | B |
By others as I pray you to forgive | B3 |
Both bad and good Last season's fruit is eaten | B |
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail | H2 |
For last year's words belong to last year's language | C3 |
And next year's words await another voice | D3 |
But as the passage now presents no hindrance | E3 |
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine | F3 |
Between two worlds become much like each other | E |
So I find words I never thought to speak | I |
In streets I never thought I should revisit | G3 |
When I left my body on a distant shore | E |
Since our concern was speech and speech impelled us | Q |
To purify the dialect of the tribe | H3 |
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight | L2 |
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age | I3 |
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort | J3 |
First the cold friction of expiring sense | K3 |
Without enchantment offering no promise | Q |
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit | L3 |
As body and soul begin to fall asunder | E |
Second the conscious impotence of rage | I3 |
At human folly and the laceration | B |
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse | M3 |
And last the rending pain of re enactment | A2 |
Of all that you have done and been the shame | W2 |
Of motives late revealed and the awareness | Q |
Of things ill done and done to others' harm | N3 |
Which once you took for exercise of virtue | O3 |
Then fools' approval stings and honour stains | P3 |
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit | Q3 |
Proceeds unless restored by that refining fire | E |
Where you must move in measure like a dancer ' | - |
The day was breaking In the disfigured street | G |
He left me with a kind of valediction | B |
And faded on the blowing of the horn | B |
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III | A |
- | |
There are three conditions which often look alike | I |
Yet differ completely flourish in the same hedgerow | E |
Attachment to self and to things and to persons detachment | A2 |
From self and from things and from persons and growing between them indifference | E3 |
Which resembles the others as death resembles life | R3 |
Being between two lives unflowering between | B |
The live and the dead nettle This is the use of memory | E |
For liberation not less of love but expanding | I |
Of love beyond desire and so liberation | B |
From the future as well as the past Thus love of a country | E |
Begins as attachment to our own field of action | B |
And comes to find that action of little importance | E3 |
Though never indifferent History may be servitude | S3 |
History may be freedom See now they vanish | T3 |
The faces and places with the self which as it could loved them | U3 |
To become renewed transfigured in another pattern | B |
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Sin is Behovely but | Q3 |
All shall be well and | X |
All manner of thing shall be well | H2 |
If I think again of this place | R2 |
And of people not wholly commendable | H2 |
Of no immediate kin or kindness | Q |
But of some peculiar genius | Q |
All touched by a common genius | Q |
United in the strife which divided them | U3 |
If I think of a king at nightfall | H2 |
Of three men and more on the scaffold | V3 |
And a few who died forgotten | B |
In other places here and abroad | W3 |
And of one who died blind and quiet | Q3 |
Why should we celebrate | X3 |
These dead men more than the dying | I |
It is not to ring the bell backward | V |
Nor is it an incantation | B |
To summon the spectre of a Rose | P2 |
We cannot revive old factions | Y3 |
We cannot restore old policies | Z3 |
Or follow an antique drum | L |
These men and those who opposed them | U3 |
And those whom they opposed | A4 |
Accept the constitution of silence | E3 |
And are folded in a single party | E |
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate | Q3 |
We have taken from the defeated | D2 |
What they had to leave us a symbol | H2 |
A symbol perfected in death | F2 |
And all shall be well and | X |
All manner of thing shall be well | H2 |
By the purification of the motive | B3 |
In the ground of our beseeching | I |
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IV | B3 |
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The dove descending breaks the air | E |
With flame of incandescent terror | E |
Of which the tongues declare | E |
The one discharge from sin and error | E |
The only hope or else despair | E |
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre | E |
To be redeemed from fire by fire | E |
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Who then devised the torment Love | B3 |
Love is the unfamiliar Name | W2 |
Behind the hands that wove | B3 |
The intolerable shirt of flame | W2 |
Which human power cannot remove | B3 |
We only live only suspire | E |
Consumed by either fire or fire | E |
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V | B3 |
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What we call the beginning is often the end | B4 |
And to make and end is to make a beginning | I |
The end is where we start from And every phrase | B2 |
And sentence that is right where every word is at home | C4 |
Taking its place to support the others | U2 |
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious | Q |
An easy commerce of the old and the new | B |
The common word exact without vulgarity | B3 |
The formal word precise but not pedantic | I |
The complete consort dancing together | E |
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning | I |
Every poem an epitaph And any action | B |
Is a step to the block to the fire down the sea's throat | D4 |
Or to an illegible stone and that is where we start | E4 |
We die with the dying | I |
See they depart and we go with them | U3 |
We are born with the dead | F4 |
See they return and bring us with them | U3 |
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree | B3 |
Are of equal duration A people without history | B3 |
Is not redeemed from time for history is a pattern | B |
Of timeless moments So while the light fails | G4 |
On a winter's afternoon in a secluded chapel | H2 |
History is now and England | X |
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With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling | I |
- | |
We shall not cease from exploration | B |
And the end of all our exploring | I |
Will be to arrive where we started | D2 |
And know the place for the first time | K |
Through the unknown unremembered gate | X3 |
When the last of earth left to discover | E |
Is that which was the beginning | I |
At the source of the longest river | E |
The voice of the hidden waterfall | H2 |
And the children in the apple tree | B3 |
Not known because not looked for | E |
But heard half heard in the stillness | Q |
Between two waves of the sea | B3 |
Quick now here now always | B2 |
A condition of complete simplicity | B3 |
Costing not less than everything | I |
And all shall be well and | X |
All manner of thing shall be well | H2 |
When the tongues of flame are in folded | D2 |
Into the crowned knot of fire | E |
And the fire and the rose are one | B |
T. S. Eliot
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Write your comment about Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding poem by T. S. Eliot
Evan Lewis: Common error in the last stanza line 5. Should read '...through the unknown remembered gate...' This is a significant error because so much of Little Gidding is about returning to our places of origin, having attained the wisdom and humility to finally know the things we remember from our past with a deep understanding rather than a cursory acquaintance.
Find Eliot reading the poem on Youtube for confirmation - he reads 'remembered'.
Warmly
Evan
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