The Four Quartets

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage we did not take, Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden.
My word is the way of the few.

There is one final way
A full grain of wheat – redemption in loss. Let us not forget fate; what favors us, And most of all, gentlemen, seize the day.
This, for September and spring. The one calls forth all spring,
A show once more beyond semblance, Where time takes us all to our close Together again, at rest.

• TS Eliot