yeah, you included.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

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.

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