There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifferenceWhich resembles the others as death resembles life,Being between two lives—unflowering, betweenThe live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:For liberation—not less of love but expandingOf love beyond desire, and so liberationFrom the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a countryBegins as attachment to our own field of actionAnd comes to find that action of little importanceThough never indifferent. 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.Sin is Behovely, butAll shall be well, andAll manner of thing shall be well.If I think, again, of this place,And of people, not wholly commendable,Of no immediate kin or kindness,But of some peculiar genius,All touched by a common genius,United in the strife which divided them;If I think of a king at nightfall,Of three men, and more, on the scaffoldAnd a few who died forgottenIn other places, here and abroad,And of one who died blind and quietWhy should we celebrateThese dead men more than the dying?It is not to ring the bell backwardNor is it an incantationTo summon the spectre of a Rose.We cannot revive old factionsWe cannot restore old policiesOr follow an antique drum.These men, and those who opposed themAnd those whom they opposedAccept the constitution of silenceAnd are folded in a single party.Whatever we inherit from the fortunateWe have taken from the defeatedWhat they had to leave us—a symbol:A symbol perfected in death.And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellBy the purification of the motiveIn the ground of our beseeching.T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets (Little Gidding, III)
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There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifferenceWhich resembles the others as death resembles life,Being between two lives—unflowering, betweenThe live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:For liberation—not less of love but expandingOf love beyond desire, and so liberationFrom the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a countryBegins as attachment to our own field of actionAnd comes to find that action of little importanceThough never indifferent. 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.Sin is Behovely, butAll shall be well, andAll manner of thing shall be well.If I think, again, of this place,And of people, not wholly commendable,Of no immediate kin or kindness,But of some peculiar genius,All touched by a common genius,United in the strife which divided them;If I think of a king at nightfall,Of three men, and more, on the scaffoldAnd a few who died forgottenIn other places, here and abroad,And of one who died blind and quietWhy should we celebrateThese dead men more than the dying?It is not to ring the bell backwardNor is it an incantationTo summon the spectre of a Rose.We cannot revive old factionsWe cannot restore old policiesOr follow an antique drum.These men, and those who opposed themAnd those whom they opposedAccept the constitution of silenceAnd are folded in a single party.Whatever we inherit from the fortunateWe have taken from the defeatedWhat they had to leave us—a symbol:A symbol perfected in death.And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellBy the purification of the motiveIn the ground of our beseeching.T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets (Little Gidding, III)