T. S. Eliot

I read this for my modern poetry class and had to post it, it's so beautiful. T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land in the middle of a failing marriage and in that first poem depicted the hopeless alienation of the modern state of existence. Afterwards, he became a Christian and wrote The Four Quartets about how it is possible for humanity to become purified so that we can reach the timelessness of eternity. Read this section with Christian theology in mind.

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

--The Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" Part IV