Little Gidding
... their life’s work. Hopeless death of air, earth, fire and water: not only elements of man’s existence but as the means of his destruction and dismissal. Narrative passage: Describes the dreary bitterness in which a life of literary culture can end if it has brought no sense of spiritual values. Section 3 An alternative to the prospect of life in section 2. Foundation of alternative found in spiritual values, especially as they appear in the tradition of the past. DETACHMENT: Allows us to use both our own past and the historical past in such a way as to draw on their present spiritual significance for us without entangling us in regressive yearning for a pattern which no longer is: History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. Accept the significance of the ...