Excerpt from “Choruses from ‘The Rock'” by T. S. Eliot

This weekend in my message, “Wisdom in the Darkness,” on Job 28 as part of our “Finding God in the Darkness” series, I quoted an excerpt from T. S. Eliot‘s work “Choruses from ‘The Rock.'” Someone asked me for the exact reference after the sermon so I’m posting it here for your enjoyment.

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

You can read the full work here.