Now and In England

Extract from Four Quartets (Quartet No. 4: Little Gidding) by T.S. Eliot

Last season's fruit is eaten
And the full-fed beast shall kick the empty pail.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice. ....

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.

Hear the whole poem read by Eliot himself here.

Happy New Year and New Beginnings to all readers of Midatlantic!