Dear Antoinette,
I am writing to you in response to your letter of April 27 in which you ask me to share with you a favorite poem and some explanation of why it is my favorite.
Rather than select a whole poem I have selected four lines from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. These lines come from the last of the Four Quartets called “Little Gidding.” A copy is enclosed. I like these four lines because they express for me, as a religious person, our going from God and our return to God. Therefore, they are lines which hold a promise. They also express what we could call the innate curiosity of human beings always wanting to explore. But, at the same time, hidden there is our true home.
I hope this arrives on time.
Faithfully,
FROM “LITTLE CIDDING” (FOUR QUARTETS)
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