Long Journeys (Part II)

The poetry of Thomas Stearns Eliot is a lot about long, cold journeyings and the things that one finds on arrival. Sometimes, the arrival is the arrival of one's self within one's self, so to speak; sometimes, the destination is the anti-climax to the journey itself. 'Little Gidding' is the fourth of the Four Quartets he wrote. It is the one that I recommend all visitors to England read, either before or after the visit.

In that poem, the last words are as follow. I couldn't find a shorter excerpt that would convey the beautiful weight of time and humanity conveyed by it all.

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,
An 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 an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
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 yew-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 and 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, unremembered 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 thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

It is stuff like that which makes one despair of ever being a poet. When you read this kind of poetry, there is the sensation that somehow, the deepest root of language has been tapped; the wellsprings of human history and legend are being drawn from and drawn upon.

More important, the sensation of his 'midwinter spring' at Little Gidding is one of having found the destination, that the journey has ended and we await the welcome of the King. It makes one realise one's weariness in the place of the world, and just how long a journeying it can seem.