Following the completion of the third Four Quartets poem , The Dry Salvages , Eliot 's health declined and he stayed in Shamley Green , Surrey while he recovered . During this time , Eliot started writing Little Gidding . The first draft was completed in July 1941 but he was dissatisfied with it . He believed the problems with the poem lay with his own inability to write , and that , precipitated by air raids on London , he had started the poem with too little preparation and had written it too quickly . After the first draft was written , he set the poem aside , and he left in September to lecture throughout Great Britain .