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  1. Georgie

From the recording Eve

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Four Quartets
T.S. Eliot

“Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint –
 
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time.
Music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 
While the music lasts. 
 
These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; 
and the rest is prayer, 
observance, discipline, thought and action. 
And right action is freedom from past and future also.

~
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation...

... It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.

The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell...

... Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.
    There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation...

...There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.
    It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—

The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver... The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was...

... Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement—
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.

Lyrics

Georgie
Aine Minogue

Georgie’s’ waiting on the tides
Waiting on the signals of the sea
Off to Santa Ana’s rhythms
Aching for the trumpets
of his soul’s decree

Chorus:
And somehow it's all slipping away
His odyssey to Cal-a for nia
Mother told him Never stray
from the oceanside

Georgie wanders by the nighttime waves
When the moon is brightest
Don't you tell him where to go
His wings are broken
Yet that part feels the lightest

Chorus:
And somehow it's all slipping away
His odyssey to Cal-a-for-ni-a
Father told him Never Stray
From the oceanside

Georgie dances by the bonfire
when the fires are lighted
How his mind it
darts and glows
when the spark’s ignited

Chorus:

but it all flickers away
like morning embers
and his dreams are going astray
in a hazy light….

BRIDGE:

..where…Once he saw his face
in the still waters
Of the shallow waves

Georgie’s sifting thru the ashes
searching for the tempest in a lonely room
Georgie’s waiting for the Holy Book
to show him where to wander
to reach the Holy Fools

Chorus:

but it all flickers away
his odyssey to Cal-a-for-nia-a
Mother told him never stray
From the oceanside

Outro:
Georgie’s on the tide, he’s waiting on the tides
Georgie’s on the tide, he’s waiting on the tides…

Georgie, Georgie, Georgie, Georgie, Georgie

###

CREDITS:

Seamús Egan: Irish whistles
Jon Evans: Bass, banjo, guitar, mandolin
Eugene Friesen: Cellos, pitz cello
Áine Minogue: Irish harp, vocals