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Eliot, T S - Four Quartets - 16 Little Gidding IV
Identifier
013549
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
T S Eliot – from Little Gidding
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