We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.”

As a freshman theatre major at Southern Methodist University, Dr. Dale Mofitt made my theatre class memorize this poem as assignment number one in our first acting class, Dramatic Arts Today. We all would have rather done monologue work, but Dr. Mofitt was a brilliant and enigmatic professor with whom we were all already obsessed, so we never asked why, we just did it. All he said was, “It’s a T.S. Eliot quote.”

He was right. It is a T.S. Eliot quote. What we memorized was the fifth and final stanza of Little Gidding, the fourth of the Four Quartets. Eliot’s finale was our overture.

I’m pretty sure that I have the Eliot piece more completely memorized than the American National Anthem.
There are certain things that one is presented with in one’s life that are so utterly befuddling that they can only be gifts from a higher power.
This poem is one of those gifts.

I believe I have hypnotized myself with it.