Cycles

In the four quartets I really focused in on all the cycles that are mentioned in these poems. Also, does the future and what could have been in the past hold equal merit???

Burnt Norton, the cycle of air: "time future contained in time past" "both the new world and the old" "enchainment of past and future" "whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time" "Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness" "that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there" "The detail of the pattern is movement"
I think that this first poem just introduces the reader to the concept of this cyclical time in which the past and future are in shifting arrangement.

East Coker, the cycle of earth: "Houses rise and fall" "Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf Houses live and die" "In the beginning is my end" "Round and round the fire" "The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts" "Eating and drinking. Dung and death. Dawn points, and another day""constellated wars Scorpion fights against the Sun Until the Sun and Moon go down Comets weep and Leonids fly" "They all go into the dark" "So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing" "death and birth" "You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again, Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not" "to be restored, our sickness must grow worse" "In my end is my beginning" 
I think that this next poem is introducing specific examples of this cyclic nature of things by giving examples of things in our lives that the general population doesn't really ever think about specifically but are well known and understood. In this, TS Eliot works his idea of cyclical time into your own thoughts.

Dry Salvages, the cycle of air: "waiting, watching and waiting. His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom" "time is never ending" "many generations" "Time the destroyer is time the preserver" "Here the past and the future Are conquered, and reconciled" 
I think that in this poem TS Eliot focuses on how people can specifically interact with this cyclical time. Throughout these poems he has a theme of certain moments in time that move neither forward nor backward, this poem contains these interactions.

Little Gidding, the cycle of fire: "melting and freezing" "If you came this way Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or season, It would always be the same" "Never and always" "water and fire" "What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from" "An easy commerce of the old and the new" "Every phrase and every sentence is and end and a beginning" "We are born with the dead" "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" "When the last of the earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning" 
I think that this poem is suggesting to readers that they need to contemplate less on this introduced cyclical time and actually go and experience it.