I have a new essay on Humane Pursuits today: "A Long Winter and the Discipline of Hope."

I came to these poems as a young man, an aspiring poet with little knowledge of either the wide world or the variety and depth of human experience within it. The poems took me immediately and forever to a deep, mysterious and timeless place where insights seemed as plentiful as stars. I'm more than half a century old, and yet their brilliance impresses, informs and inspires me still.

James Zinsmeister, "T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Where Time and Timeless Intersect"

Roger Scruton on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

[It is] a poem which has been, for many of my generation, the essential account of our spiritual crisis—and the greatest message of hope that has been given to us. Four Quartets is a profound exploration of spiritual possibilities, in which the poet seeks and finds the vision outside time in which time and history are redeemed. It is a religious work, and at the same time a work of extraordinary lyric power, like the Cimetière marin of Valéry, but vastly more mature in its underlying philosophy.

"T. S. Eliot as Conservative Mentor"