T.S. ELIOT

Lord, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?

Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers

For life, for dignity, grace and order,

And intellectual pleasures of the senses?

The Lord who created must wish us to create

And employ our creation again in His service

Which is already His service in creating.

(Smidt, 1961, 55)

We build in vain unless the Lord build with us.

(Buxton, 520)

O weariness of men who turn from God

To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,

To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,

To the schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,

Binding the earth and the water to your service,

Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,

Dividing the stars into common and preferred,

Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,

Engaged in working out a rational morality,

Engaged in printing as many books as possible,

Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,

Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm

For nation or race or what you call humanity;

Though You forget the way to the Temple,

There is one who remembers the way to your door:

Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

You shall not deny the stranger.

(Buxton, 520-521)  

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Smidt, K. Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot. New York: Humanities Press, 1961.

Buxton, E. W. Creative Living...Five. Toronto: W.J. Gage and Co.