#East Coker

[hyperions-fate]

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot, 'East Coker' (Four Quartets)

#T.S. Eliot #East Coker #Four Quartets #Poetry

[quietflorilegium]

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope 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.”

T.S. Eliot, "East Coker," "Four Quartets"

#t.s. eliot #east coker #four quartets #the soul #waiting #ocd #meditation #living in the moment

[culturevulturette]

East Coker (from "The Four Quartets")

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk 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 pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon, Where you lean against a bank while a van passes, And the deep lane insists on the direction Into the village, in the electric heat Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone. The dahlias sleep in the empty silence. Wait for the early owl. In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing around the bonfire the association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie A dignified and commodious sacrament. Two and two, necessarye coniunction, Holding eche other by the hand or the arm Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles, Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes, Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth Mirth of those long since 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. Dung and death.

Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

T. S. Eliot

#poetry #east coker #the four quartets #t. s. eliot

[pandaemoniumpancakes]

Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence.

T. S. Eliot, form ‘East Coker: I.’ in Four Quartets. 

#t s eliot #four quartets #east coker

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"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."

~ T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton: "East Coker"

#one of my favourite quotes #t. s. eliot #thomas stearns eliot #burnt norton #east coker #literature #literature quotes #lit quotes #literary quotes #literary quotations #quotations #poetry #20th century poetry #20th century literature #poetry excerpts #humility #english author #english lit #english literature #english poetry #british author #british lit #british literature #british poetry #dark academia #dark academia quotes #chaotic academia #chaotic academia aesthetic #dark academia aesthetic #classic lit

[loneberry]

—T.S. Eliot

#literature #poetry #faith #ts eliot #t.s. eliot #four quartets #East Coker

[randomfoggytiger]

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres Trying 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.

4 Quartets, 2: East Coker

T. S. Eliot

#poetry #4 Quartets #2: #East Coker #to all the writers out there #this is you

[infinitesofnought]

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, 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 Almanach 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 theatre, 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 façade are all being rolled away– Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence 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 hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and 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 thyme 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 dispossession. 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.

– T. S. Eliot, from “East Coker”, Four Quartets

#being-toward-death #icicles are flames #light/dark #sacrifice #darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend #t. s. eliot #east coker #four quartets #poetry #negative space

[starryspeculation]

this is the part 🤍

#ts eliot #four quartets #east coker

[fungipdf002]

Wait Without Hope

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope 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 thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker

#t.s. eliot #east coker #Wait Without Hope

[evaporizzo]

For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker, 1940.

#t s eliot #eliot #poetry #east coker #1940 #americano #poesia #sperimentazione #sperimentale

[sontusnubes]

#t.s. eliot #east Coker

[quietflorilegium]

“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 cease to matter.”

T.S. Eliot, "East Coker," "Four Quartets"

#t.s. eliot #east coker #four quartets #a time for everything #everything in its time #love #what love is #the essence of love

[gothprentiss]

swooning honestly

#nothing like east coker. nothing like poems

[pandaemoniumpancakes]

each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

T. S. Eliot, from ‘East Coker: V.’ in Four Quartets. 

#t s eliot #four quartets #east coker

[inkforhumanhands]

Daredevil Noir (2009) (original art by Tomm Coker & Dan Freedman) (lyrics modified from "North East South West" by Japandroids)

#mattfoggy #daredevil #comicedit #matt murdock #foggy nelson #marvel #comics #inkedits #spent three whole days on this one and i'm rather proud of it #daredevil noir #daredeviledit #daredevil comics