Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Honestly gorgeous poetry, redolent of introversion during the Blitz, trying to come to terms with the good and bad shackles of history and the distinct possibility of annihilation.

This is one of my favorite T.S. Eliot poems and I just kept getting that "all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well" stuck in my head all day. I HAD to re-read this poem twice since then. I appreciate the points where the Mystery took over the lines but they were not the best parts for me.

The imagery for everything else was just too beautiful and scary.


The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.


***

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.


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