The only hope, or the despair/ Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre

“The dove descending breaks the air/
With flame of incandescent terror/
Of which the tongues declare/
The only discharge from sin and error/
The only hope, or the despair/
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre–
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised this torment?/
Love
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wave
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”

T.S. Eliot


IV, IV of Four Quartets