Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Recent Poetry: T. S. Elliot: Four Quartets

Excerpt from The Four Quartets:

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 or 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.

2 comments:

Rural Catholic said...

I'm a recent convert to Catholicism...and have read or am going to read alot of your reading list...I just plugged in T.S. Elliot's Christian poetry on google and was sent to your blog. May God bless you in your journey and do try G.K.Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc or Cardinal Newman. DBW

Jesse Broussard said...

I'm a recent convert to Calvinism, and Chesterton is one of my all time favorites. I have not yet had the pleasure of encountering Hilaire Belloc or Cardinal Newman, but now hope to do so sometime soon. Thank you for the referrals; they are always appreciated.

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