This poem refers to the mystical ladder of divine love presented in the Dark Night of the Soul in its late mention of "the figure of ten stairs". Its fourth section asks "Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis / Stray down, bend to us[?]" and describes a time when "the light is still / At the still point of the turning world". This poem d
This poem refers to the mystical ladder of divine love presented in the Dark Night of the Soul in its late mention of "the figure of ten stairs". Its fourth section asks "Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis / Stray down, bend to us[?]" and describes a time when "the light is still / At the still point of the turning world". This poem describes the "desiccation", "evacuation", and "inoperancy" of the worlds of "sense", "fancy", and "spirit" that occur after a descent into "the world of perpetual solitude". In its first section, a bird tells a poet to "round the corner" into the "first world," warning the poet that "humankind cannot bear much reality" as it guides them through a place whose "leaves were full of children" laughing and hiding. This poem features the recurring image of a rose-garden at a house in the Cotswolds, and begins with the lines "Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future". For 10 points, name this poem, the first of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.