The Moments of Happiness

The moments of happiness...
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness...
...the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable...

(from T.S.Eliot 'The Dry Salvages' in Four Quartets)