Four Quartets (1667)

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The culminating achievement of Eliot's poetic career. The four parts: "Burnt Norton","East Coker", "The Dry Salvages" and "Little Gidding" present a rigorous meditation upon those spiritual, philosophical and personal themes that preoccupied the author. Amazon.com Review Published in the fiery days of World War II, Four Quartets stands as a testament to the power of poetry amid the chaos of the time. Let the words speak for themselves: "The dove descending breaks the air/With flame of incandescent terror/Of which the tongues declare/The only discharge from sin and error/The only hope, or the despair/Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--/To be redeemed from fire by fire./Who then devised this torment?/Love/Love is the unfamiliar Name/Behind the hands that wave/The intolerable shirt of flame/Which human power cannot remove./We only live, only suspire/Consumed by either fire or fire." Review I submit this quotation as one of the finest lyrics written in our time ... I strongly recommend a reading of Mr. T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets . -- The New York Times Book Review, Horace Gregory