I am breaking off from Victorian poets to bring you a poem (well, part of a poem) by T.S. Eliot.
Elliot is probably best known to children for his depiction of felines in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". Who cannot resist Macavity: The Mystery Cat, Old Deuteronomy and Mr Mistofolees?
Of course, these characters were brought to a wider audience through Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats".
However, the subject today is not cats - but in fact something entirely different and more intellectual.
I have over the past couple of years blogged items about "Time" and the concept of "Now", so I was interested to find this Eliot poem, which I had not read before.
The complete poem is rather long, so here are just three excerpts.
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 unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and 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.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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 jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
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.
T.S. Eliot
Norton Manor
Note: Burnt Norton is a manor in Gloucestershire visited by Eliot in 1934. Its rose garden suggested the imagery of the opening section.
You can read the full poem at:
28/06/08 @ 14:12