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I thoroughly enjoyed this re-exploration or Four Quartets. Of course, as I mentioned elsewhere, one never really "finishes" reading poetry of this calibre--any more than one "finishes" a Beethoven Late Quartet. Always there are subtleties, insights, emotional ambiences waiting.
I still prefer the first and last Quartets, but I found some beautiful things in the others. I found this Epiphany moment in "East Coker" very moving:
"Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."
Luminous moments like this have a Spiritual power one never forgets and longs to revisit.
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