Contrary to the title, each chapter is not necessarily of a particular season. Rather, their titles and their ordering are from Eliot's Four Quartets. In "The Kingfisher's Wing", there is a phrase that I lifted from Donald Hall's "Affirmation": "to grow old is to lose everything." Also I am taking some liberty with Elven cosmology in Aegnor, seeing that Elves probably do not perceive time as infinite or cyclic.
1) "the kingfisher's wing"
Time and the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away. Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling?
Chill Fingers of yew be curled Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.
- IV. of "Burnt Norton"
2) "late November"
What is the late November doing With the disturbance of the spring And creatures of the summer heat, And snowdrops writhing under feet And hollyhocks that aim too high Red into grey and tumble down Late roses filled with early snow?
- "East Coker"
3) "the tolling bell"
And under the oppression of the silent fog 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.
- "The Dry Salvages"
4) "Midwinter spring"
Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic."
- "Little Gidding"
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