Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

How would you respond to these opening lines of T.S. Eliot's poem "The Rock":

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying.

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

2 comments:

Cindy said...

Marvelous poem. He's got a pretty good grasp of where man has gotten himself.

Rosie Ludlow said...

Such a good poem. I love that its so relevant still today, and yet sad that what we search for and have lost is right in front of us.