Teasdale & Eliot, Begin & End

"There will come a time
when you believe everything is finished.
That will be the beginning."

from Lonely on the Mountain
by Louis L'Amour (1908 – 1988)

As I mentioned on my earlier post,
"Body Image, Again and Still,"
I keep mixing up the following two passages.
You can see why:

1. Sara Teasdale
"Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun"

and

2. T. S. Eliot:
"to make an end is to make a beginning"

Thus I am creating here a permanent reminder:

1.
At Midnight
Now at last I have
come to see what life is,

Nothing is ever ended,
everything only begun,

And the brave victories
that seem so splendid

Are never really won.

Even love that I built
my spirit's house for,

Comes like a brooding
and a baffled guest,

And music and men's praise
and even laughter

Are not so good as rest.

by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

2.
"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice . . .
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from . . .
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

~T.S. Eliot
From "Little Gidding"(Parts II & V)

From "Little Gidding" (Part V)

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
he complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them. . . .

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. . . .