О weariness of men who turn from God
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises.
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited.
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred.
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger…
Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they would like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SzWblRpAng&w=600
P.S. If you missed our “Possibly Insane Thoughts on Ash Wednesday” or “God Bless the Insomniacs”, they might be worth looking at today.
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2 responses to “Two Portions of T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses From ‘The Rock'””
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I’ve always loved Choruses from the Rock; my copy is falling to pieces. Thanks for posting this!
Particularly for those who are themselves preachers, I would recommend the sermons of Eliot’s favorite preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, and especially those on the nativity.