“last year’s words belong to last year’s language”

A moment poetical as a new year begins:

[…]

Last season’s fruit is eaten
And the fullfed 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.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.

[…]

T. S. Eliot.  Little Gidding

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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2 Comments

  1. Ms. M-S says:

    Thanks, Fr. Z. A poem’s still better when we can hear you read it aloud. Just sayin’.

  2. Semper Gumby says:

    Thanks Fr. Z.

    Fr. Longenecker’s series on T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”:

    Here there is motion and emotion, intention and commitment. Here one is drawn by an inexorable but gentle power of purgation. All is driven and motivated by Love—the divine energy that Dante said “moved the sun and all the other stars.”

    https://theimaginativeconservative.org/category/senior-contributors/fr-dwight-longenecker/four-quartets-series

    For more on T.S. Eliot see “Literary Converts” by Joseph Pearce.

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