Little Gidding

“Little Gidding” reflects T. S. Eliot in late middle age when, as a Christian, his thoughts move beyond clock time. In the opening section, the speaker, locked within the heavy pull of midwinter, argues an awareness of time beyond the simple linear progression of a person’s life from birth to death. Nature itself bursts with reassurances that linear time is not the end-all. The speaker feels the animation of the coming spring when the snow gives way to spring blossoms, highlighting that “[m]idwinter spring is its own season” (Line 1). In addition, he considers how different the chapel grounds seem at night and how daylight offers entirely new perspectives.

Drawing on the cycles of nature that defy time, the speaker knows his soul represents the true time-space dimensions of the Christian cosmos itself, a magnificent energy field that beggars beginnings and renders ironic any ending. Christianity reassures those aware of the vertical reach rather than the horizontal limits of time that endings are only moments to begin. In the end, the poet affirms a transcendent non-time “[w]hen the last of the earth left to discover / Is that which was the beginning” (Lines 246-47). In breaking the logic of clock time, the speaker reclaims the innocence and grace of humanity’s prelapsarian reality, offering nothing less than Eden reclaimed, a chance to become again “the children in the apple-tree” (Line 250).