TS Eliot opened The Wasteland with these lines:
April is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed the same thought:
"Spring"
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
In other words, spring seems to be kind, but life is nourished by death, and life is fleeting.
Percy Shelley wrote,
"O, Wind. If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"
But the reverse is true: if spring comes, can winter be far behind?
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, you may die--or diet as the case might be.
There is nothing light-hearted or cheery about the poetry of TS Eliot. I wonder to what extent the nihilism of his predecessors influenced TS Eliot.
The idea of eternal recurrence is echoed in the Four Quartets, Burnt Norton: "Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past".
It was an interest in the works James Joyce that led me to discover the poetry of TS Eliot and authors of that era.
I think that whenever a poem, a novel, a piece of music, a painting or sculpture captures our attention it is because it resonates with something deep within us. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”