T.S. Eliot and Nicholas Ferrar: Time's Timeless Poet and the Timeless Believer at Little Gidding

"Little Gidding" is the fourth and final poem of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888-January 4, 1965). Stanza V contains Eliot's famous observation that the result of exploring the world will be to return to our point of origin and see it anew:

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.

The poem received its name from the village of Little Gidding in southeastern England. Although T.S. Eliot is known to have made only one visit to Little Gidding, in May 1936, he was deeply impressed with the legendary reputation of a religious community founded there 300 years earlier. Little Gidding was the site of an Anglican community established by Nicholas Ferrar (February 22, 1592-December 4, 1637) in 1626.

Nicholas was one of nine children of Nicholas Ferrar Sr. 1544/1545-June 1620] and Mary Woodnoth Ferrar [c. 1554-May 1634].

Nicholas was precocious and entered Cambridge at age 13, studying at Clare College. Two events occurred there that were to have lifelong significance for him. He contracted malaria there, and he met George Herbert [April 3, 1593-March 1, 1633], whom history knows as a Welsh poet and Anglican priest, respected for his hymns and poems. Decades later on his deathbed in 1633 George Herbert entrusted his collection of poems, 'The Temple,' to Nicholas, asking him to publish or burn them as Nicholas saw fit. Nicholas contacted Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, Cambridge University printers, and 'The Temple' was successfully published, with 13 printings in 50 years. Four years later Nicholas’ youthful bout with malaria resurfaced and caused his untimely death at age 45.

In the winter of 1612 to 1613, Nicholas' health was so delicate that his doctor urged him to travel to sunnier parts of continental Europe. Through family and Cambridge connections, arrangement was made for Nicholas to depart for Heidelberg in the entourage of newly married Princess Elizabeth [August 19, 1596-February 13, 1662] and Frederick V, Elector Palatine [August 26, 1596-November 29, 1632]. The travellers left London on April 10, 1613. Sailing from Margate in southeastern England on April 25, they braved the seasickness of the North Sea and on April 29th landed in Vlissingen [Flushing] on the island of Walcheren in southwestern Netherlands. Several days later Nicholas wrote to his brother John that he had decided to separate from the entourage in Utrecht and go to Hamburg instead of Heidelberg.

Nicholas' health improved as he travelled extensively throughout continental Europe. On his travels he became fluent in Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish. Nicholas especially enjoyed brief apprenticeships with masters of different crafts [architect, dyer, painter, smith, weaver] in which he became skilled in the techniques and knowledgeable in the terminology. He studied physic [medical arts] as well as broadening his religious horizons through extensive, friendly discussions with Anabaptists [precedessors of America's Amish and Mennonites], Jesuits, and Jewish scholars.

In 1617/1618 Nicholas returned to England to assist his family with their heavy involvement in the London Company [Charter of the Virginia Company of London], which had been established by royal charter by James I of England [June 19, 1566-March 27, 1625] on October 26, 1606. The London Company had established the first permanent English settlement in the colony of Virginia in 1607 at Jamestown. Nicholas' father had been involved with the Company since 1609. In fact, Sir Walter Raleigh [c. 1552-October 29, 1618], the great explorer of the New World, was a frequent visitor in the Ferrar family home.

Nicholas Senior also belonged to the livery company [trade association] for furriers, the Skinners' Company [Worshipful Company of Skinners], of which his oldest son John [c. 1588-September 28, 1657] was also a member.

Nicholas' father died in June 1620. Even though Nicholas had delicate health, as a younger son was not his father's heir, and also was unmarried, his father's will appointed Nicholas as the sole executor of the estate, with Nicholas' mother Mary and his older brother John as joint overseers. Nicholas relentlessly carried out his responsibilities, continuing to earn the respect of all who encountered him. His intelligence and negotiating skills enabled his family to survive the dissolution of The London Company in May 1624 amid Nicholas' accusations against one of its founders, Sir Thomas Smith [1558?-September 4, 1625], of skimming profits from shareholders and of reducing colonists to virtual slavery by extending indentures beyond the seventh year.

At that time John faced near-bankruptcy with the insolvency of his cloth merchant partner and relative, Thomas Sheppard, stemming from the loss of investments in the colony of Virginia and a legal dispute. Nicholas resolved this crisis by arranging for the purchase of one of Sheppard's few remaining assets, a derelict Manor House in Little Gidding. The property was purchased in Mary Woodnoth Ferrar's name for £6000 and paid for with Mary's dowry.

In summer 1625 Nicholas and his mother journeyed from the family home on St. Sythe's Lane in the heart of London's merchant community to Little Gidding. They were accompanied by John, his wife Bathsheba Owen, and their 5-year old son Nicholas [1620-May 19, 1640]. They were soon joined by Nicholas' sister Susanna [1581-October 9, 1657] with her husband John Collett [c. 1578-1650], and their 14 surviving minor and adult children as well as grandchildren.

The household had their work cut out for them in their new surroundings. Most of the village's inhabitants had been wiped out by the Black Death two centuries earlier. There were more sheep than people in the area. The village was basically deserted, with the little Church of St. John reduced to a barn and the manor house dilapidated after years of vacancy. Nicholas and his household set about repairing first the church and then the manor house. They based their daily life on devoted observance of the Book of Common Prayer [which Nicholas had memorized in its entirety], religious studies, and on charitable involvement in the area. In time a dispensary was set up for providing broth and medicines to local people. Also an almshouse for elderly locals was eventually established.

In spring 1626 the family briefly returned to London to finalize their relocation. As part of his commitment to the family's new lifestyle, Nicholas arranged to be ordained as a deacon in Westminster Abbey by Bishop William Laud [October 7, 1573-January 10, 1645]. [Bishop Laud subsequently rose to the highest position in the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1633 and was beheaded during the English Civil War, 1641-1651]. As a deacon, Nicholas could act as the household's spiritual leader.

You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. ('Little Gidding,' Stanza I)

The household's daily routine started at 4:00 in the morning [5:00 in winter] with scriptures and hymns. Morning Prayer was held at 6:30 a.m. The Litany was recited at 10:00 a.m. Evening Prayer was said at 4:00 p.m. All 150 psalms were recited twice a day. At the suggestion of George Herbert, Nicholas arranged for a constant night watch, from 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., in which the household's adults rotated evenings and devoted the watch to reciting psalms and sometimes soft singing. Nicholas took responsibility for two of the night watches.

On Sundays Morning Prayer was conducted. Nicholas established a Sunday school, which at one time totalled almost 100 students. A penny was given to each student for every psalm memorized. Also a mid-day meal was provided. On the first Sunday the Vicar of Steeple Giddings administered Communion. On Sunday afternoons the household journeyed to Steeple Giddings [1 mile; 1.6 kilometers] for evensong.

For religious education, the household created a number of Bible harmonies, in which parallel texts in the different books of the Bible were blended together as one text. They especially favored Gospel harmonies wherein the narratives of the four Gospels were combined into one continuous narrative. Of eleven extant Ferrar harmonies, seven harmonize the Gospels, two harmonize the five Books of Moses, one covers the Acts of the Apostles, and one harmonizes the Books of Kings and Chronicles. The harmony of Kings and Chronicles was suggested by King Charles I [November 19, 1600-January 30, 1649], who was presented with a copy.

The household compiled the harmonies so that the narratives could be read either as a whole or in part. For example, the letters A, B, C, and D were assigned respectively to the four Gospels, and the relevant letter prefaced the passages from that particular Gospel. In this way, the reader could go through the entire harmony or could focus on a particular Gospel within the harmony with the aid of the initial letter.

Another important detail in the harmonies was the use of interesting and well-sized illustrations. Nicholas had collected numerous engravings during his travels as early on he was interested in compiling Bible harmonies and wanted to include illustrations. The earliest surviving Ferrar harmony, the Harvard Harmony, has illustrations on 52 of its 86 folio pages.

The household attached great significance to their harmonies and devoted much time to perfecting them. They hired the daughter of a Cambridge bookbinder to reside with them for a year and to teach them bookbinding, gilding, and laying in the illustrations and text. Furthermore, the learning and practicing of calligraphy were greatly prized pursuits.

Although Bible harmonies, especially of the Gospels, dated back to the second century A.D. with 'Diatessaron' [Greek: 'at intervals of four'] by Tatian [c. 120-180] and although harmonies could be found throughout continental Europe, they were virtually nonexistent in English Biblical scholarship. Thus, the Ferrars' harmonies stood out as rare jewels, in Charles I's words, and were eagerly sought for viewing.

The Ferrar community quietly attracted attention, respect, and thousands of visitors, including such luminaries as Richard Cranshaw [c. 1613-August 25, 1649], Peter Gunning [1614-July 6, 1684], Barnabas Oley [1602-1686], John Williams [March 22, 1582-March 25, 1650], and King Charles I [November 19, 1600-January 30, 1649].

Richard Cranshaw is remembered today for his religious and secular poetry and for his conversion to Catholicism that led to his employment in 1648/1649 as Secretary to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta [1594-1668].

Peter Gunning is remembered as a Royalist church leader who held chaplaincies in Oxford's New College and Ettington in central West Midlands, became Bishop of Chichester in 1669, and was appointed to Cambridge's oldest professorship, Lady Margaret's Professorship in Divinity, in 1661.

Barnabas Oley held the vicarage of Great Gransden, west of Cambridge. He's remembered today for editing some of George Herbert's works and for the school which he founded in Great Gransden in 1870, which still exists and now bears his name.

John Williams is remembered for holding the second highest rank of the Great Officers of State, that of Lord Chancellor, from 1621 to 1625, and the second highest rank in the Church of England, Archbishop of York, from 1641 to 1650. He was the last Lord Chancellor who was also an Archbishop.

"If you came at night like a broken king . . ." ('Little Gidding,' Stanza I)

In mid-May 1633, on his way to his scheduled June 8th coronation as King of Scots, Charles I stopped at Little Gidding. The King ended up borrowing one of their gospel harmonies for several months. The harmony was returned, with comments and a request for a harmony of Kings and Chronicles. Charles I made at least two more visits to Little Gidding, once on March 15, 1642 with his son, Charles II [May 29, 1630-February 6, 1685] and his nephew, Prince Rupert [December 17, 1619-November 29, 1682], and then again on May 2, 1646.

This last visit was under straitened circumstances, for he had suffered key defeats at the Battle of Naseby [June 14, 1645] and the third Siege of Oxford [May 1646] and was travelling incognito, seeking shelter and concealment. He was accompanied only by his chaplain, Michael Hudson [1605-1648], and his Groom of the Chamber, Sir John Ashburnham [1603-June 15, 1671]. John Ferrar felt that the household's known support of the King compromised the party's safety, so he conducted them to a safer location 3 miles away [4.8 kilometers] in Coppingford.

Charles I was subsequently arrested, tried, and condemned to death. His execution occurred on January 30, 1649. His last official words were "I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the World." He indicated to his executioner that he would signal his readiness for beheading by stretching out his hands. After placing his head on the block and insuring that his hair was firmly within his execution cap, he said, "Stay for the sign." After a brief pause, Charles flexed his fingers and lost his head.

In an unprecedented gesture, Charles' chief opponent, Oliver Cromwell [April 25, 1599 - September 3, 1658], agreed to allow for reattaching the severed head to the body. Charles I was privately buried in St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on February 7, 1649.

On May 19, 1660, Charles I was canonized as a saint in the Anglican Communion. His feast day is January 30. He is thus known as King Charles the Martyr.

After his mother's death in May 1634, Nicholas increased his austerities, which would not have pleased her. Mary Woodnoth Ferrar felt that excessive austerities were detrimental to well-being. On nights that he was not in charge of the night watch, Nicholas arranged to be awakened at the end of the watch. He then spent the rest of the night in prayers and meditation. When Nicholas bravely visited John Williams in the Tower of London in July 1637, the toll of his severe lifestyle on his health was painfully obvious to his imprisoned friend. Within four months Nicholas succumbed to a resurgent bout of ague and malaria. He was buried at the west end of the Church of St. John in Little Gidding.

After Nicholas' death, the household continued under the leadership of John and Susanna. Although known as Royalists [loyal supporters of Charles I], the household's quiet, rural remoteness intentionally removed them from the political whirlwind brewing in London. Nevertheless, in November 1646, six months after Charles I's last visit to Little Gidding, Parliamentarian soldiers descended upon the property, plundering and ransacking it. Fortunately warned of their approach, the household fled and didn't return until July 1647.

The household persevered but their fate was sealed in 1657 with first John's death on September 28 and then Susanna's on October 9, both succumbing to a flu epidemic. They were laid to rest near Nicholas' grave. The religious community faltered without them, although John's descendants continued to live there and were recorded in parish registers until 1748. Part of the manor house was torn down in the early 1700s, and the rest of it was demolished in 1798.

Although the Ferrar household was long gone, they were never really forgotten. They left a lasting, unique impression of sincere belief in forming a truly spiritual community, with charitable, uplifting involvement with their neighbors and the less fortunate, secluded in the remote countryside, away from the maelstroms that characterize worldly living. They lived in this world but they were not of it. Despite numerous weekly visitors seeking spiritual as well as secular direction, the household, especially during Nicholas' lifetime, succeeded in tightly weaving their daily lives with spiritual aspirations and values. Although they physically lived in manmade time, they were attuned to faith's timelessness.

As Nicholas wrote to his cousin Arthur Woodnoth on May 10, 1630, the household sought to achieve

". . . that web of friendship which I hope might otherwise prove a pattern in an age that needs patterns."

 The images of that 'web of friendship' which have persisted over the centuries represent the very intersection of manmade time with timeless moments that T.S. Eliot explored in his 'Four Quartets.' And Nicholas Ferrar's Little Gidding, that tiny village that time and timelessness never could forget completely, was T.S. Eliot's inspiration.

In 1946 Alan L. Maycock formed the Friends of Little Gidding. His interest in Nicholas Ferrar's spiritual household was spiked by several timeless intersections with the quiet, dedicated believer of centuries past. Alan went to Cambridge in 1918 and studied engineering at Clare College, where Nicholas had been enrolled three centuries earlier. Nicholas' name and reputation were still held in high regard, and Alan became interested in learning about him.

Alan left Cambridge to work abroad, but in 1931 he returned to Cambridge with his wife Enid to accept the position of Director of the University Appointments Board. Their next-door neighbors in Cambridge were two sisters, Richenda and Theodora Chadwick, who shared the Maycocks' interest in Nicholas. These admirers of a true believer whom they had never met ended up making a heartfelt trip together to visit Little Gidding. From that visit the idea of forming the Friends of Little Gidding was born. The Friends finally was formed in 1946, with T.S. Eliot serving as a Vice President. Alan also found time to write two books about Nicholas and his household, both published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge [SPCK]: 'Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding' in 1938 and 'Chronicles of Little Gidding' in 1954.

After directing the Appointments Board for 33 years, Alan retired, but his connection with Nicholas was by no means over. Alan took on the position of Keeper of the Old Library at Cambridge's Magdalene College, where a number of Nicholas' letters had surfaced a few years earlier. Alan was cataloguing the letters all the way to his death in 1968.

Today the Friends of Little Gidding works cooperatively with the Little Gidding Trust and the T.S. Eliot Society [U.K.] in maintaining Little Gidding for its many admirers and pilgrims. Three well-attended yearly events there are the T.S. Eliot Festival, the mid-year pilgrimage to Nicholas' tomb, and Nicholas Ferrar's Feast Day on December 4.

The T.S. Eliot Festival [in its fifth year in 2010] is funded by Old Possum's Practical Trust. The trust was founded on January 29, 1990 in the wake of 'Cats.' Andrew Lloyd Webber's well-loved musical was inspired by T.S.'s poems for children, 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' [London: Faber and Faber, 1939]. T.S.'s widow, Esmé Valerie Fletcher Eliot [b. August 17, 1926], is the trust's Settlor and Patron.

". . . history is a pattern of timeless moments" ('Little Gidding,' Stanza V)

Nicholas Ferrar and T.S. Eliot, each in his own way and also through their timeless intersection in time, sought timelessness and found it, specifically at Little Gidding.

Nicholas is venerated as a saint by the Church of England on December 4 and by the Episcopal Church of the United States on December 1st.

T.S. Eliot is regarded as one of the most important poets not only of the twentieth century but of all time.

Part I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
Whem the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Part II

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: "What! are you here?"
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: "The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember."
And he: "I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold fricton of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and sould begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.

Part III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives - unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as an attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though 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, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of not 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 scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet,
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us - a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

Part IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one dischage from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

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,
The 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.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

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.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Website of the Friends of Little Gidding

http://www.littlegidding.org.uk/

Website of Saint John's Church, Little Gidding

http://www.littlegiddingchurch.org.uk/index.html

Website of Old Possum's Practical Trust

http://www.old-possums-practical-trust.org.uk/page.cfm?pageid=300

Website of T.S. Eliot Society [UK]

http://www.eliotsociety.org.uk/

'Appendix: Little Gidding', A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 1 (1926), pp. 399-406. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=38153

Kershaw, Simon. 'Little Gidding and Nicholas Ferrar: A Talk and Poetry Reading at Little Gidding, July 2005.' http://www.kershaw.org.uk/littlegidding/nicholas-ferrar.html

'Narrative of the history of the Friends of Little Gidding, 1946 - present,' http://www.littlegiddingchurch.org.uk/lgchtmlfiles/lghist3.html

'Parishes: Little Gidding', A History of the County of Huntingdon: Volume 3 (1936), pp. 53-57. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66145

Ransome, David. 'The Ferrar Papers 1590-1790 in Magdalene College Cambridge: Introduction/Finding List.' http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97513.pdf

Ransome, Joyce. 'Monotessaron: The Harmonies of Little Gidding.' http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/uploads/docs/s2_18.pdf

______________. 'Prelude to Piety: Nicholas Ferrar's Grand Tour.' http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/uploads/docs/180001.pdf

Riley, Kate E. 'The Good Old Way Revisited: The Ferrar Family of Little Gidding c. 1625-1637.' Doctor of Philosophy Thesis. University of Western Australia. 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0026/public/02whole.pdf

Copyright April 16, 2007 by Stessily