First to Second Poem

8/13/2019 First to Second Poem

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Ash Wednesday

by T.S. Eliot

*Explanations and analysis of poem lines are written as footnotes.

I

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn1

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power2

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again3

1The decision of the author not to turn again, means not to evade the challenge of the

present by returning to the more comfortable past it is a deliberate and conscious

decision, made out of necessity.

The renunciation is to be that of all comforting illusions which the past seems, and only

seems, to offerwhich is an escape from the ever changing challenges of the present.

Why? Whatever it may have been in the past can no longer be a source of life in the

present.

2

These are the things to be renounced, since they are irrelevant to ones own presentneeds and unattainable due to ones limitations.

Renounce glory and power which are no longer relevant to the needs of the present time,

which fail to give satisfaction in the present situation.

3 No longer drinking from the past where trees have already flowered. Nothing in the

sense that we start again from nothing. In leaving the past, we make new decisions for the

present.


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Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place4

I rejoice that things are as they are andI renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice5

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discussToo much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again6

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

4Limitation of ones choice limited in the choosers time and place. That a sound choice

implies a recognition of the things as they are (context). Hence, a renunciation of the past

must be made in the appropriate time and in full consciousness.

5Again, this implies a renunciation of the past. The past needs to be renounced continually

simply because it is past and as such finished. It is not to be confused with the living

present.

Here, the author finds a foundationa decision upon which he is to build and truly rejoice.

6Setting aside or renunciation of excessive occupation, of the things the author discusses

and explains too much.


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Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will7

Teach us to care and not to careTeach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.8

7About the authors, and also of all other poets in the present, lack of inspiration in creating

poetryinspiration has become small and dry.

8First poem ends in a prayer teach us (poets) to express ourselves with sympathy and to

sit still, waiting for the right time for renunciation of the past.


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II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree9

In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety

On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

In the hollow round of my skull. And God saidShall these bones live? Shall these

Bones live? And that which had been contained10

In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

Because of the goodness of this Lady

And because of her loveliness, and because

She honours the Virgin in meditation,

We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled11

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.It is this which recovers

My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn

In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten

And would be forgotten, so I would forget

Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said12

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for onlyThe wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping

With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

9Lady as related to Dantes Beatrice who will intercede for the author with the Virgin, as

what Beatrice did for Dante, thus opening the way for him (the author) to rise to the vision

of God.

The three white leopards, on the other hand, which devoured the human remains under

the tree, are connected to the three beasts Dante met in the dark forest which was a

turning-point in Dantes life, also of that of the author.

10Can life be born out of these bones having accepted the experience of death?

11The bones see the possibility of restoration in the intercession of the Beatrice-like Lady.

12 The bones ready to accept their death (renunciation of oneself and the past) and,

following the example of the Lady, having a new purpose.


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Lady of silences13

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulnessExhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfiedEnd of the endless

14

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.15

13 The song of the bones which takes the form of a litany to the Lady of Silences, it

combines the Catholic Litany of Our Lady.

14The author uses paradoxical phrasesreconciling opposites to arrive at a meaning.

15This garden can be equated with an earthly paradise.


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Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,

Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye16

Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

16The song of the bones taken as a happy acceptance of the death of oneself - renunciation

of the past and of ones self.

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