This poorly child, so young and frail, escaped in worlds that thrilled
for reading books in solitude anaesthetised his pain.
Adventure themes and Sawyer's tales impassioned him and filled
his days of inactivity whilst muse enjoyed free rein.
His kinship home, St. Louis, charmed and also fuelled his dreams,
A setting that surpassed all else, its river stirred his soul.
And, hence, his destiny was set from early days, it seems -
a life that would embrace the arts, advance his cherished goal.
But, though good fortune shone on him with learning never spared,
'twould take another spark of fate to fan his glowing flame.
In London, poet, Ezra Pound, compellingly declared
that Eliot, a man to watch, would soar to lofty fame.
And, first, this gifted man would prove a poet of his day
with Prufrock's tortured, stilted cry of crisis: "Do I dare?"
For in this skit of modern man, a psyche gone astray,
the artist, in life's coffee spoons,* revealed his deep despair.
For these were bleak, unsettled times, the world had suffered war*;
his marriage too was failing fast and mentally unsound.
In chilling tone, The Waste Land would reflect the death he saw
of culture and the spiritual, prevailing all around.
This work was hailed a tour de force,* reflecting modern age,
eschewing imagistic art,* it painted life more dark.
Yet, in that post-war stage, a time, to turn a brand-new page
and resurrect, in social terms, from landscape bare and stark.
Dispirited by man's decline, he sought a different road,
a system that would fortify and give him strength again -
reacting to those Hollow Men, he found the strictest code
of faith in Christianity, conviction born from pain.
And this inspired, in World War Two, his last great masterpiece -
The Four Quartets, this song of time, aspiring to give hope
that future fears, uncertainty (mid bombing raids) would cease
while steadfast trust in foregone age wrought faith to help folk cope.
This modernist philosopher who strove to find man's role,
who penned with wisdom stunning work with impact that would last;
through wartime waste and social change, his creed inspired the goal
that balance only feeds our soul through rituals of the past.
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