I'm just going to link the poem here because it's a pretty long read (but worth it). I chose this poem for a couple of reasons: 1) the epigraph, 2) the repetition.
The epigraph is an excerpt from Dante's Inferno. This relates back to the chapter, Vessel of Remembrance, because it quite literally calls back to a much older work than the one the reader is currently taking in.
The poem itself employs a few different types of repetition, for examples, the lines "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, // The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes," are almost the same, but not quite. Repeating some words and phrases but changing others. I like what Hirshfield has to say about repetition, "Repetition embracing variation is the thread of the cloth Mnemosyne wears." Eliot uses repetition in such a long poem to continuously jog the reader's memory, otherwise, they risk getting lost in the lines.
Hello Emma,
First off, I love this poem (and T.S. Eliot). For me, Eliot has an amazing way at combining nostalgia with a heightened sense of future. It is absolutely wonderful and something beautiful I found about remembrance in this poem was the line "There will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;" ... to me it felt like combining a thought from the past and breathing it into the future.