We come to the second division of the poem. The first 15 lines which comprise a stanza and certainly must be understood together read:

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The mud thrown-up by the wagon as it plunges along spray up, unto the axle and would “clot” it. That makes plain sense. Yet is not the mud which is send to clot the wagon but the “garlic and sapphires.” This is a striking and strange phrase. Why would there be garlic or sapphires in the mud. Certainly one wouldn’t leave them there – certainly not sapphires. And then to have them merely muck thrown-up to the underside of a wagon. The world is certainly mixed up. But to what end is not apparent in these lines.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The precise nature of the “trilling wire” is not exactly clear. I certainly don’t think he intends any precise physiology on this point. Then what do we have: I take this as something similar to Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” or perhaps Thomas’ “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It is some sort of live force that runs through all things. I think he means some sort of force in all living things (even all moving things) and more than just human life. 

The “scars” above the blood here will become stars above all the rest. The combination of scars and wars works well: The war brought about the scar. The scar will never be removed, it is “inveterate”. And this life at work even beneath the scars of war appease the wars. But how so appease? To appease is to bring to rest some anger. There is a life which runs through and under even wars

Eliot writing after WWI and written during at least the first part of WW2 would not have a dim idea of war. But here the wars are “long-forgotten.” In saying this, he seems to be moving in a dim history. He is not speaking of his own life, but something of life. There is a history written in the life and in the scars. This present is not sharply marked-off from the past. The present bears the scars of the long forgotten wars and the same life sings beneath.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

The distinctions between the life of his body and the life of nature also become lost. The life in his body is the life of the movement of the stars. The parts are mysteriously linked together. My pulse is tied up with the movement of stars (and visa-versa). 

The effect is quite pagan, where gods become animals or have human lovers and humans have half-god children and humans may find themselves transformed into something quite different. (For a less poetic and more philosophical consideration, see Peter Jones, The Other Worldview)

What is important here for the overall theme of the poem is that it is not just time as an abstraction, but the all things which are bound up together in this moment which is present. 

Next, it is the movement above and below which are reconciled and coordinated. The sky above and the mud below:

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

The chase of animals on the ground is the chase of animals in the stars. The music of the spheres is transported to what we “hear upon the sodden floor.”

But there is something else here than bare correlation of opposites or even all things are one: The verb “reconciled” is interesting. What is reconciled? Most directly the chase of the boar and the boarhound. Their conflict and fight is “reconciled” above. 

This moves us in a somewhat different mood than bare pagan all is one and inter-vesting each the other. The conflict upon the earth is not merely reflected in the heaven, it is reconciled. This introduces a Christian tone which moves beyond Greek or Norse mythology. Everything is telling one story, but there is a way to understand this story, if you will, in a higher key.