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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Introduction
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"Burnt Norton" is the opening poem of T. S. Eliot's book-length sequence Four Quartets. The poem was first published in 1936, and the Quartets as a whole appeared in book form in 1943. In "Burnt Norton," which takes its title from a decaying English country estate, the speaker meditates on the intersection of past, present, and future—and on the idea of transcending time altogether, as if occupying "the still point of the turning world." Over the course of five sections, the poem juxtaposes images of a "rose-garden" (which evoke a mythical childhood paradise) with "gloomy" images of Eliot's London (which capture the "distraction" and "disaffection" of modern life). Rather than accept this gloom as inevitable, the speaker seeks—and urges the reader toward—a vision of recaptured innocence and purity. Together, the Four Quartets (which consist of this poem, "East Coker," "The Dry Salvages," and "Little Gidding") are widely considered the definitive statement of Eliot's religious beliefs and philosophical ideas.
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Summary
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I
Both the past and the present may survive into the future, and the future may already be contained within the past. If there's nothing but the present moment, we can't ever transcend time. Anything that might have, but didn't, happen is purely theoretical; it endures as a possibility only in a hypothetical world. What might have happened and what did happen lead forever to one place: the present moment. We seem to remember footsteps reverberating down the corridor we didn't follow, toward the door we didn't open, into a garden full of roses. That's how my words reverberate with you. But I don't know what their purpose is—why they bother disturbing the air and shaking the dust off a bowlful of rose leaves.
There are other echoes in the rose garden, too. Should we follow them? A thrush said: Hurry, go find them, they're just around the corner. Should we follow this tricky bird through the original gate, into our original (that is, childhood) world?
And there we found the source of the echoes, stately, unseen, passing in ghostly fashion over the dead leaves, in the heat of fall, in the lively atmosphere. The bird cried out in answer to the ghostly music in the bushes, the ghostly stare we passed through—since the flowers looked as though they were being watched (or looked after). The ghosts/echoes were our guests: we accepted them and they accepted us. We moved together, in a formal arrangement, down the empty alleyway, into a circle of boxwood hedges, to stare into the garden's dry pool. The pool was drained, its concrete brown and dry, but it seemed to fill with sunlit water (or was full of sunlight that resembled water). A lotus flower appeared, the surface of the pool dazzled us, and the ghosts stood behind us, mirrored by the pool's surface. Then a cloud went by, the vision disappeared, and the pool was dry again. The bird told us to go, because the bushes were once full of kids, exuberantly hiding and laughing. Leave, leave, leave: people can't stomach too much reality. What might have happened and what did happen lead forever to one place: the present moment.
II
Garlic cloves and blue gemstones, mixed together in the mud, clog the stuck cart-axle. An excitement in the bloodstream seems to sing out beneath old scars, relieving the pain of long-ago battles. The circulation of the body's blood and lymph are reflected (or prefigured) in the movement of the stars. We seem elevated into the trees of summer. We move above the swaying treetops, amid the light on the patterned leaves. We hear, on the soggy earth below, the hunting dog chase the wild boar as usual, but the pattern of their violence seems like part of the pattern of the heavens.
At the quiet center of the spinning universe—not body or spirit, not movement from or toward anything—at the quiet center, that's where the true, dance-like action is, but it's neither stillness nor motion. And don't say it's stagnation, there at the intersection of past and future. It's not movement from or toward anything, up or down. If not for this quiet center, there would be no dance-like action, and there is only this dance-like action. All I can say is, we've been through that, but I can't say where that is. And I can't say how long it lasted, since that would be to locate it in time (as opposed to eternity). An inner release from functional wants and needs, from activity and pain, from both internal and external demands—instead, immersion in a graceful sensation, a blank light that's both moving and unmoving, a sense of elevation without any movement, of focus without reduction. A new world opening up and the old one opened to understanding, grasped in the fulfillment of its unfulfilled bliss, the end of its unresolved awfulness. Still, the linking of past and future in the vulnerable, changing body (i.e., the body's existence in time) shields humanity from both heaven and hell, which mortal people can't withstand.
Time (past and future) permits us to be only slightly conscious. Being truly conscious means being outside of time, but it's only in a time-bound existence that special moments—like the one in the rose garden, the one under a shady niche in a rainy garden, or the one in a chilly church as fog descended—are available to memory. Only then are these special moments linked to the rest of time. Only those who live in time can defeat time.
III
This is a place full of dissatisfaction. Past and future mingle in semi-darkness, which is neither sunlight—making objects look clear and stable, making fleeting shadows beautiful, and revolving in what seems like eternity—nor a pure soul-cleansing darkness, bringing release through sensory deprivation, reducing our attachment to the temporary. This semi-darkness is neither fullness nor emptiness. It's just a flicker across the harried faces of people who are continually distracted, even from their distractions; who indulge in meaningless fantasies; whose indifference swells and prevents focus. People and scraps of paper swirl around in the cold air that comes out of eternity, that passes as breath in and out of unhealthy lungs, past and future. Impure souls belch out into the low light, sluggish and swept on the wind that blows through grim London hills, including the neighborhoods of Hampstead, Clerkenwell, Campden, Putney, Highgate, Primrose, and Ludgate. This isn't where true darkness is to be found—not in this busy, noisy world.
Go down deeper, go down into a world of enduring isolation—which is really everything that's not the world. It's an inner darkness, a sensory deprivation and shedding of all possessions, a drying-up of the senses, an emptying-out of fantasy, and a breaking of the spiritual life. This spiritual descent is one way to redemption, and it's the same as spiritual ascent—not through motion but the withholding of motion, while the greedy temporal world moves on in its mechanized fashion.
IV
The evening bell has marked the end of daytime. The sun sets in dark clouds. Will sunflowers turn toward us, clematis vines reach down to us, their stems and flowers hold on to us?
Will cold yew needles fall on us? After the wing of the kingfisher bird has flashed quietly in the sunlight, the light is constant at the quiet center of the spinning universe.
V
Words and music can come only from the temporal, living world, but anything that's merely alive can merely die. Words stretch out into silence, trying to transcend ordinary language. Only through their form or pattern can words or music transcend themselves, the way a classic Chinese vase seems forever dynamic even while remaining still. This isn't the way the violin seems still while it lingers on the same note—or it's not only that, it's the co-existence of past, present, and future. Or put it this way: the end comes before the beginning, and both have been there since before the beginning and will be there after the end. And everything is always present. Words stretch, falter, and sometimes collapse beneath the strain and burden (of expressing these things); they shift around, die, deteriorate due to inexactness, and refuse to stay still on us. They're always attacked by shrill voices that chide, jeer, or just babble. The Word of God is most often assailed—like Jesus tempted by Satan in the desert—by voices that tempt with grief and despair, and with piercing, unhappy illusions.
Up close, the pattern looks like motion, as in St. John of the Cross's metaphor of the ten steps on the ladder to heaven. Desire itself is a type of motion, which is not desirable in its own right. Love is perfectly still: it's just the cause and goal of motion, eternal and free of desire except in the limited, time-bound world between nonexistence and true existence. All at once, in a sunbeam, while the dust is still stirring, comes the sound of laughing children hiding in the leaves, animated and ever-present—making all the unhappy, empty time before and afterward seem absurd.
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Themes
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Time, Change, and Spiritual Transcendence
"Burnt Norton" is the first of the four poems/sections in T. S. Eliot's book-length sequence Four Quartets. Like the Quartets as a whole, "Burnt Norton" reflects on the slippery nature of time and change. In particular, the poem presents time as a constant burden on humanity: to live is to always be moving through time and toward death. The central problem of this poem, then, is how to transcend or break free of time itself—and, it follows, transcend mortality.
The speaker initially frets that "If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable." In other words, if the present is all there is at any given moment (the past gone, the future not yet real), then there's no way to fully understand it or make meaning out of it. To put it more simply, people can't live in the present moment if that moment becomes the past as soon as one experiences it. It's always the present, yet the present is too elusive ever to "fix[]" or pin down because time is constantly flowing.
And yet, the speaker also suggests that people can attain a kind of transcendent state, beyond the reach of time, even while living within the flow of time. The speaker calls this state "the still point of the turning world." One might think of this "still" point as like the center of a "dance," the axis of "the turning world" as opposed to one that has stopped turning. Compare the common metaphor of "the eye of the storm": the storm is raging (and time is still flowing), but there is stillness within it.
Reaching this "still point" requires understanding time as a seamless whole: the future contains the present and the past, and the past "contain[s]" the future as well. (This perhaps suggests that past, present, and future are simultaneous, like points within a continuous flow or cycle; time is not just a succession of vanishing individual moments.) In other words, this "still point" involves a kind of heightened sensitivity to the way "past and future" intersect in the current moment.
Such awareness, the speaker promises, grants a "release" from everyday "action and suffering." From this "still point," according to the speaker, emerges "both a new world / and the old made explicit." Becoming fully aware of the present, that is, allows one to see beyond the ordinary categories of stillness and motion, past and future, etc.
Eliot folds this idea into a larger, Christian vision of spiritual transcendence and victory over death. The speaker claims that "To be conscious is not to be in time": the highest human consciousness can transcend the limits of the mortal body. Or, to be fully "conscious" of the present is to break free of time. Yet, in another paradox, "Only through time time is conquered": only the vulnerable, mortal body can achieve such transcendence. (An immortal being would have no need to "conquer[]" time and death.) This idea ties into the poem's Christian themes: in particular, it evokes the idea that Christ had to become mortal in order to conquer mortality and redeem believers into eternal life as well.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Before Line 1
- Lines 1-48
- Between Lines 48-49
- Lines 49-92
- Between Lines 92-93
- Lines 93-129
- Between Lines 129-130
- Lines 130-139
- Between Lines 139-140
- Lines 140-178
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Childhood Innocence, Disenchantment, and Redemption
"Burnt Norton" juxtaposes scenes of childhood innocence, played out in an Eden-like "garden," with scenes of modern, urban disillusionment. The poem hints that the childhood garden might be an imagined world that never actually existed. Still, this garden—which represents a vision of lost innocence and possibility—remains a touchstone for the disappointed adult mind. In terms shaped by Eliot's Christian faith, the poem holds out hope that there's a way back to this garden. In other words, it suggests that the violence, brokenness, and disappointment of adult life are redeemable; it's possible to recover one's lost innocence.
The speaker grapples with the loss of a mythic world of childhood innocence, regretting the lost possibilities it seems to represent. The poem guides the reader back "Into our first world," the world of childhood, described as an Eden-like "garden" full of "roses" and "sunlight." The poem hints that these are not literal childhood memories but instead a beautiful "deception"—a symbolic fantasy or imagined childhood paradise. In fact, the garden lies behind "the door we never opened," so it may well represent what childhood could or should have been—as well as the better adult life that might have followed.
The poem ultimately promises (as Christianity also promises) that some "reconcil[iation]" with this lost paradise is possible. In other words, there is a spiritual way back to the love, innocence, and possibility glimpsed in childhood. This involves awareness and acceptance of suffering as part of God's plan.
The poem suggests that human fate is governed by the heavens (even the workings of the human body are "figured in the drift of stars") and that the world's violence is part of God's grand, redemptive design. Metaphorically, "the boarhound" will always pursue "the boar"—violence and death are built-in features of the world "Below" heaven—but they follow a "pattern" that's "reconciled among the stars." That is, suffering is part of, and resolved by, heaven's mysterious plan.
The poem later closes with a restorative vision of "the hidden laughter / Of children in the foliage / Quick now, here, now, always." In this context, "always" suggests that childhood innocence remains timeless and recoverable even after childhood ends. For adults, in other words, there is a path back to the spiritual equivalent of this innocence—as in Jesus's statement that "Except ye ... become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Figuratively speaking, childhood never really leaves us but only plays hide-and-seek until we find it again. If and when we recover this innocent spirit, it's so fulfilling that "the waste sad time / Stretching before and after" seems utterly "Ridiculous."
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 11-18
- Lines 19-48
- Lines 49-63
- Lines 162-178
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Escapism, Fantasy, and Distraction
Even as "Burnt Norton" criticizes the realities of modern life, it also warns against retreating from them into pure "fancy" and illusion. The poem depicts ordinary modern people as living under the burden of trivial, distracting fantasies. It offers its own vision of purity and innocence, but acknowledges that this vision is, in part, escapist. Ultimately, it seeks, and encourages the reader to seek, a stance that neither accepts tragic modern realities (without imagining something higher and better) nor denies them altogether.
The poem depicts illusion or fantasy (a.k.a. "fancy") as a cornerstone of modern misery and "disaffection"—and encourages the reader to let it go:
- Early in the poem, a talking bird (which is itself imaginary!) says that "human kind / Cannot bear very much reality." The poem therefore suggests that human beings struggle to confront reality head-on and in fact have a limited ability to perceive reality as it is.
- Later, the "strained," distracted "faces" the speaker witnesses in 20th-century London are "Filled with fancies and empty of meaning." That is, they are obsessed with hollow fantasies that relieve the stress of their day-to-day lives.
- Freeing oneself from modern angst, the speaker asserts, requires the "Evacuation," or emptying out, "of the world of fancy.” The poem urges readers to shed the comforts of meaningless fantasy and confront the painful truths of modern existence (things like aging, loss, etc.) as directly as possible.
Overall, the poem warns against the kind of trivial escapism that mass culture and media provide, but acknowledges the need to escape or transcend the often unbearable reality of the present. Accordingly, it offers what, for Eliot, was a credible ancient myth rather than a cheap modern fantasy: a Christian myth of redemption through self-purification and a return to childhood virtues.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 19-45
- Lines 93-129
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Language and Belief
As a poem by an aging poet in a turbulent world, "Burnt Norton" confronts the limits and sorrows of language. Eliot frames this problem partly in Christian terms—as the world's "attack[]" on the pure "Word" of God—but also in terms of the ordinary writer's struggle to capture meaning on the page. Human language, the poem seems to imply, can never attain perfect or divine status; it will always frustrate writers and speakers. Yet, limited as it is, language is the primary tool by which people attempt to stretch beyond their own limitations and grasp truths they can believe in.
The poem portrays "words," including its own, as inherently slippery and frustrating. The speaker presents their own language as ghostly and weak, perhaps even powerless. They claim their words "echo [...] in your mind" like the sound of footsteps "Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened." That is, they carry haunting overtones of nostalgia and regret, and the speaker claims not to know "what purpose" they serve now.
Later, the speaker declares that "Words, after speech, reach / Into the silence." Here, "after" seems to mean "beyond": the speaker is describing language (such as poetry, perhaps) that seeks to transcend ordinary "speech." There's no guarantee that this aspirational "reach" will succeed, however. In trying to pluck some truth from the world's "silence," the speaker admits, "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden." Inevitably, they "Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, / Will not stay still." They have a maddening way of shifting around and creating ambiguity when we most want them to be precise.
And when words do capture some truth, the speaker adds, they are threatened by those who would undermine that truth. On the rare occasions when human language manages to be articulate and truthful, it's "assail[ed]" by "Shrieking voices / Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering." That is, other voices in society counter it with derisive yelling and inarticulate babbling.
Even the Word of God (Eliot was a believing Christian) is not safe in this world. It is "most attacked by voices of temptation," including voices of despair ("The crying shadow in the funeral dance") and deception (the "lament of the disconsolate chimera," a mythical creature associated with the fantastical and impossible).
Literary and spiritual writing, then, becomes a quest to establish and defend some sort of permanent truth in a world of falsehood. The poem frames language as a bid to stretch beyond the limits of the self, or beyond the limits of humanity in general. It's what Eliot calls, elsewhere in Four Quartets, a "raid on the inarticulate," and what writers hope to bring back from that "raid" is not only meaning but belief.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 11-18
- Lines 140-161
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The Fragmentation and Alienation of Modern Life
Like much of Eliot's work, "Burnt Norton" contains images of cultural and social fracture, including distracted, alienated people in a modern urban setting. Focusing on London in particular, it presents a cityscape that's "gloomy" and "unwholesome"—yet, ironically, not "dark[]" enough to "purify the soul." However, the poem presents this condition as potentially escapable or redeemable. It suggests that by descending even lower into the spiritual depths—fully confronting solitude and alienation—modern people can find transcendent "meaning" within their broken world.
The poem portrays a modern urban landscape of cultural fragmentation and disorder. For example, the speaker points out the "strained time-ridden faces" of early 20th-century London. In one its most famous lines, the poem calls these urban dwellers "Distracted from distraction by distraction." Their lives are so lacking in coherent meaning that they seem like fragments themselves: "Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind." The speaker also laments the voracious appetites and mechanical coldness of the modern urban world, which produces "unhealthy souls" rather than spiritual nourishment and fulfillment.
The disorder and fragmentation seem to extend beyond the modern city into modern civilization as a whole. The speaker presents the striking symbolic image of "Garlic and sapphires in the mud," which suggests a disorder in which common and worthless things, temporary and durable things, etc. are jumbled randomly together. Similarly, the speaker expresses anxiety about humanity's alienation from the natural world: "Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis / Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray / Clutch and cling?" The speaker is wondering, here, whether humanity can still find peace in or reconciliation with nature—even if this peace occurs only in the grave. The speaker (prophetically!) sums up his broken, distracted cultural landscape as a "twittering world."
Yet the poem holds out various possibilities of escape or transcendence, even amid the social fracture of city life. After presenting the image "Garlic and sapphires in the mud," the speaker suggests some possibility of transcending this disorder and viewing it in some higher cosmic perspective. Symbolically, this involves "Ascend[ing]" into the spiritual "light" above the treetops and gaining an elevated view of worldly affairs. Meanwhile, the poem suggests that redemption from the anguish of city life—the restoration of "unhealthy souls"—requires escape into a deeper, cleansing "darkness." It requires a kind of "Descen[t]" into the spiritual underworld, beyond ordinary sensation and imagination. The cure for modern excess, this passage suggests, involves refuge in deliberate "deprivation": disconnecting oneself fully from society (making one's alienation total) in order to realize some higher truth.
Indeed, the poem preaches that the two ways—descent into spiritual "darkness" and ascent into the spiritual "light"—are really one and "the same." This idea echoes one of the poem's epigraphs, drawn from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: "The way up and the way down are one and the same." For Eliot's purposes, this statement might imply that one must hit rock bottom in order to recover; modern people must experience and confront despair in order to find redemptive hope. The poem's other epigraph from Heraclitus—"The law of things is a law of Reason Universal, but most men live as if they have wisdom of their own"—is also relevant here. The poem seeks to guide readers out of their individual alienation toward an ancient and universal wisdom.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 49-63
- Lines 93-129
- Lines 130-139
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton”
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Lines 1-5
Time present and ...
... time is unredeemable.T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" begins with a series of concise yet complex philosophical statements. These revolve around the nature of "time," a subject the poem underscores through constant repetition:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.Lines 1-3 suggest that the past and present might, in some mysterious way, survive into the future rather than vanishing altogether. They also suggest that the future might be "contained in" the past: that is, already somehow existent within the past and waiting to unfold. However, the speaker qualifies these statements with "perhaps," establishing a quality of ambiguity that will continue throughout the poem. (In Part V of the poem, the speaker will admit, in fact, that "Words" are frustratingly incapable of capturing time's essence, so that any attempt along these lines is provisional at best.)
Adding to the ambiguity, the phrase in line 4—"If all time is eternally present"—can be read in two virtually opposite ways. It could mean either "If past, present, and future coexist simultaneously" or "If there is nothing but the present" (i.e., if time is an endless succession of vanishing moments).
In terms of the poem's overall argument, the second reading makes more sense. Line 5 finishes the thought: if all time is eternally present, then "All time is unredeemable." The word "unredeemable" basically means "unsalvageable," but here it also has Christian connotations (in light of the poem's many Christian references and Eliot's later career as a Christian public intellectual). To "redeem" time would be to make it in some way eternal, just as Christ is said to grant eternal life to mortal people. So if there were nothing but the ever-vanishing present, there would be no way to escape the present (and thus escape mortality). Instead, these opening lines seem to imply, past, present, and future do coexist: what appears to be a one-way flow of time—a series of vanishing moments—is really circular and/or simultaneous. As a result, our seemingly mortal, vanishing lives are part of something eternal. (Well, "perhaps," anyway!)
It's worth noting, here, that Eliot prefaces the Four Quartets as a whole with two epigraphs from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, whose work is deeply concerned with the flux (flow) of time. These epigraphs are discussed in depth in the Devices and Context sections of this guide. In general, "Burnt Norton" riffs on the philosophy of Heraclitus, as well as the Christian thinker St. Augustine and others, while confronting ancient time-related questions from a modern perspective. (For example, What is time? How does it work? Is there such a thing as eternity?) As a 20th-century writer, Eliot also seems aware of the way early-20th-century physics (e.g., Einstein's theory of relativity) overthrew conventional ideas about time—although this poem does not adopt a strictly scientific perspective.
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Lines 6-10
What might have ...
... is always present.
Unlock all 366 words of this analysis of Lines 6-10 of “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 11-18
Footfalls echo in ...
... do not know. -
Lines 19-24
...
... our first world. -
Lines 25-31
There they were, ...
... are looked at. -
Lines 32-36
There they were ...
... concrete, brown edged, -
Lines 37-41
And the pool ...
... pool was empty. -
Lines 42-48
Go, said the ...
... is always present. -
Lines 49-53
Garlic and sapphires ...
... long forgotten wars. -
Lines 54-59
The dance along ...
... the figured leaf -
Lines 60-63
And hear upon ...
... among the stars. -
Lines 64-69
At the still ...
... only the dance. -
Lines 70-74
I can only ...
... the outer compulsion, -
Lines 74-80
yet surrounded ...
... its partial horror. -
Lines 81-86
Yet the enchainment ...
... a little consciousness. -
Lines 87-92
To be conscious ...
... time is conquered. -
Lines 93-102
Here is a ...
... plenitude nor vacancy. -
Lines 102-106
Only a flicker ...
... with no concentration -
Lines 107-112
Men and bits ...
... the faded air, -
Lines 112-116
the torpid ...
... this twittering world. -
Lines 117-124
Descend ...
... world of spirit; -
Lines 125-129
This is the ...
... and time future. -
Lines 130-134
Time and the ...
... Clutch and cling? -
Lines 135-139
Chill ...
... the turning world. -
Lines 140-146
Words move, music ...
... in its stillness. -
Lines 147-152
Not the stillness ...
... is always now. -
Lines 152-158
Words strain, ...
... Always assail them. -
Lines 158-161
The Word in ...
... the disconsolate chimera. -
Lines 162-165
The ...
... in itself desirable; -
Lines 166-171
Love is itself ...
... un-being and being. -
Lines 172-178
Sudden in a ...
... before and after.
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Symbols
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The Rose-Garden
In general, gardens are ancient symbols of growth and renewal—or decline, if untended. The "rose-garden" described in Parts I, II, and V of "Burnt Norton" is linked with all of these ideas. This garden hovers somewhere between being an actual and a fantastical place, and it seems to be a combination of at least two things:
- On the one hand, it refers to the literal, decaying gardens of the real-world country manor called Burnt Norton. Its appearance is a testament to the passage of time and the inevitable loss of life, love, and beauty within the mortal world.
- At the same time, the "rose-garden" refers to an imagined, idyllic space filled with childhood play—a space Eliot calls "our first world" and which brings to mind the Garden of Eden.
As such, the signs of decay (its "dead leaves" and such) in the garden might symbolize a fall or exile from the joy and innocence of childhood, akin to the biblical Fall of Man (that is, humanity's exile from the "first world" of Eden). That the speaker is led to this garden suggests a desire to return to humanity's original paradise and/or to the happiness of childhood. And at the end of the poem, the mention of the return of "hidden laughter [...] in the foliage" might symbolize that this paradise—childlike innocence, hope, etc.—can indeed be regained.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 13-14: “Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden.”
- Lines 19-24: “Other echoes / Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? / Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, / Round the corner. Through the first gate, / Into our first world, shall we follow / The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.”
- Line 88: “But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,”
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The Lotos and the Pool
While in the rose-garden, the speaker describes a surreal vision: a dry pool suddenly fills with "water out of sunlight" and from this water a "lotos" slowly rises. This is a complicated, ambiguous symbol, but it's clearly a peaceful, replenishing vision for the speaker.
Dryness typically represents barrenness, and the empty, "drained" pool might represent creative, imaginative, or spiritual emptiness. Water, meanwhile, is the stuff of life. That this pool suddenly fills, then, perhaps represents the return of inspiration or fulfillment within the paradisical "rose-garden."
Sunlight, meanwhile, is linked with the divine—with God. This image might thus be one of glittering light pouring from Heaven, filling a previously barren pool, and allowing a "lotos" flower—itself associated with purity in some Eastern traditions—to rise. The whole scene, then, feels like a religious vision, one that perhaps illustrates how God's love allows for spiritual renewal, replenishment, and so on.
"Lotos" might also refer to the mythical lotos fruit, which causes pleasant sleepiness and forgetfulness and is associated with blissful escape from earthly cares. Eliot's mention of the fruit might be an allusion to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Lotos-Eaters"—which, in turn, alludes to the lotus-eaters of Greek mythology, who live in a dreamy state on an isolated island. In this context, the "lotos" might symbolize an escape from the ordinary world of time. The sudden appearance of the "lotos" might also symbolize a transcendent peace or bliss that the speaker experiences within the rose-garden—which is already, to some degree, an escapist fantasy.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 35-40: “To look down into the drained pool. / Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, / And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, / And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, / The surface glittered out of heart of light, / And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.”
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Garlic and Sapphires
Part II of the poem begins with this odd, symbolic image:
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.An "axle-tree" is the axle joining the wheels of an old-fashioned cart or carriage, so this is an image of both stillness and wreckage. On the literal level, it seems a carriage has broken down in the mud, spilling garlic cloves and blue gemstones everywhere. Symbolically, "Garlic and sapphires" stand for virtually opposite things: the humble and the luxurious, the temporary and the enduring, the common and the rare, etc. Yet the "mud" seems to blur these distinctions, just as the one short line (line 49) contains both words. In the mud, garlic cloves and jewels might just look like similar-sized lumps!
Symbolically, this little scene evokes a world or culture that's stuck and broken, and that lumps wildly disparate things together (because traditional distinctions have been lost in the chaos). T. S. Eliot's most famous poem, "The Waste Land," is a portrait of extreme cultural breakdown and fracture, and in lines like this one, "Burnt Norton" appears to be as well. However, this poem's outlook is ultimately more consoling—as in the vision of "reconcil[iation] among the stars" at the end of this stanza. If the garlic and jewels are jarringly thrown together into the same image, they're ultimately reconciled into the same coherent vision: they're both part of a destiny written in the heavens.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 49-50: “Garlic and sapphires in the mud / Clot the bedded axle-tree.”
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The Stars
Stars are traditional symbols of destiny or fate. In "Burnt Norton," they more specifically represent a divine plan written in the heavens. The speaker mentions the stars twice:
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars [...]Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.The first of these images suggests that the human body is mysteriously "figured" (reflected or prefigured) in the heavens. By extension, human life operates according to a divine order or plan. (This could also be read as an astrological image, though a later section of Four Quartets will reject astrology and other forms of ancient divination as contrary to the Christian worldview.)
The second image claims that "the boarhound and the boar"—themselves symbols of the hunter and hunted, or earthly violence—"Pursue" a "pattern" that is "reconciled among the stars." Broadly speaking, then, even the brutality of nature (or the world at large) is part of a divine, cosmic order.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 54-56: “The dance along the artery / The circulation of the lymph / Are figured in the drift of stars”
- Lines 61-63: “Below, the boarhound and the boar / Pursue their pattern as before / But reconciled among the stars.”
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
T. S. Eliot is famous for his use of allusions. His best-known poem, "The Waste Land," incorporates quotations and references spanning thousands of years of literary history. Though Four Quartets isn't quite as allusion-heavy, it's still dense with references.
First, the Quartets are prefaced by two epigraphs from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (or Herakleitos):
The law of things is a law of Reason Universal, but most men live as though they had a wisdom of their own. (J. M. Mitchell, trans.)
The way up and the way down are one and the same. (Guy Davenport, trans.)
The philosophy of Heraclitus deals extensively with the flow of time (his best-known statement is that "No man ever steps into the same river twice"). It also focuses on the unity of opposites, a concept illustrated by the second epigraph above (and paraphrased in lines 125-126 here: "This is the one way, and the other / Is the same"). Meanwhile, the first epigraph evokes the kind of universal wisdom the Quartets seek to impart as a balm for the ills of modern life. The poem's statements about time (e.g., lines 1-5) incorporate some of Heraclitus's thinking on this subject, along with St. Augustine's reflections on time in the Confessions (c. 400 CE).
Eliot's references to "unheard music" (line 29) and the "stillness" of the "Chinese jar" (lines 145-146) echo John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819), a famous poem about an ancient urn (ornamental jar) whose "quietness" paradoxically conjures up "melodies [...] unheard." In both poems, the haunted and haunting silence is related to the effects of both memory and poetry.
The word "lotos" in line 38 carries several possible literary/religious echoes. This fruit of the lotos/lotus tree appears in Homer's Odyssey (Book IX), as well as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Homer-referencing poem "The Lotos-Eaters" (1832). In both works, the lotos is a pleasant drug that causes users to forget all worldly attachments and cares. The lotus flower is also an important symbol in (for example) the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, where it's associated with divine perfection and purity. Here, the mirage-like "lotos," rising in the garden "pool," might symbolize any or all of these things; broadly, it's an image of purity, holiness, and contentment.
Another likely allusion comes in lines 49-50: "Garlic and sapphires in the mud / Clot[ting] the bedded axle-tree." Some critics believe this odd image alludes to the 19th-century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s "M’introduire dans ton histoire," which describes "Tonnerre et rubis aux moyeux" (thunder and rubies at the wheel-hubs). Mallarmé’s poem goes on to describe "kingdoms shattered and dispersed" and the metaphorical "chariot [wheel] of evening," so Eliot's poem may be adapting this apocalyptic image to symbolize modern cultural brokenness.
Christian references sprinkle the poem as well, reflecting Eliot's personal faith. Lines 158-161 ("The Word in the desert / Is most attacked by voices of temptation") refer to the biblical Temptation of Christ (see Matthew 4:1-11). "The figure of the ten stairs" (line 163) refers to an image from "Dark Night of the Soul," by the 16th-century Christian mystic St. John of the Cross, which envisions ten steps on the "ladder of divine love."
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 1-5: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past. / If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable.”
- Lines 22-24: “Through the first gate, / Into our first world, shall we follow / The deception of the thrush?”
- Line 29: “The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,”
- Line 38: “And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,”
- Lines 49-50: “Garlic and sapphires in the mud / Clot the bedded axle-tree.”
- Lines 145-146: “The stillness, as a Chinese jar still / Moves perpetually in its stillness.”
- Lines 158-161: “The Word in the desert / Is most attacked by voices of temptation, / The crying shadow in the funeral dance, / The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.”
- Lines 162-163: “ The detail of the pattern is movement, / As in the figure of the ten stairs.”
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Repetition
Unlock all 469 words of this analysis of Repetition in “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Juxtaposition
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Paradox
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Antithesis
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Diacope
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Unredeemable
- Abstraction
- Footfalls
- Thrush
- Box circle
- Lotos
- Heart of light
- Clot
- Axle-tree
- Trilling
- Inveterate
- Appeasing
- The lymph
- Figured
- Boarhound
- Fixity
- Erhebung
- Enchainment
- Arbour
- Smokefall
- Disaffection
- The temporal
- Plenitude
- Time-ridden
- Tumid
- Eructation
- Torpid
- Hampstead, Clerkenwell, Campden, Putney, Highgate, Primrose, Ludgate
- Twittering
- Destitution
- Dessication
- Evacuation
- Inoperancy
- Abstention
- Appetency
- Clematis
- Tendril and spray
- Yew
- Kingfisher
- Chinese jar
- Assail
- The Word in the desert
- Disconsolate
- Chimera
- Figure of the ten stairs
- Waste
Unredeemable-
(Location in poem: Line 5: “All time is unredeemable.”)
Unsalvageable; impossible to turn into something meaningful or worthwhile. Alludes to the Christian concept of redemption into eternal life.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton”
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Form
"Burnt Norton," like all the poems in Eliot's Four Quartets, contains five sections numbered with Roman numerals. These sections might be likened to discrete passages or movements within a longer piece of music, such as a classical symphony. (In classical music, a "quartet" is a piece composed for four voices or instruments, but "quartet" can also mean one of a set of four; here, it means one of four poems in a sequence).
The poem is generally written in free verse, meaning that it has no regular rhyme or meter. However, some individual passages use one or both. For example, Part II begins with rhymed iambic tetrameter ("Garlic and sapphires [...] among the stars"), while Part IV uses rhyme but no consistent meter. There's no regular stanza pattern, either; the poem seems designed to reflect the fluid, organic twists and turns of Eliot's thought.
At the same time, the poem is intensely, almost hypnotically repetitive. Its repetitions give it a quality that many critics have likened to meditation, incantation, or prayer. It circles back relentlessly to its major themes, especially "time"—a word that appears 30 times in "Burnt Norton." These formal qualities mirror the philosophical argument of Four Quartets, which presents time itself as cyclical (the last section of the sequence famously claims: "And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time").
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Meter
Most of "Burnt Norton" is written in free verse, meaning that it has no regular meter. Eliot, along with several of his fellow modernists, was among the first poets to popularize free verse (a term modeled on the French vers libre) in English-language poetry. However, he was thoroughly trained in metrical technique as well, and much of his free verse adapts or dabbles in traditional rhythms.
In "Burnt Norton," for example, some lines are close to iambic pentameter (they have five metrical feet called iambs, which contain two syllables arranged in a da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm). Line 39, for example, is perfect iambic pentameter:
The sur- | face glit- | tered out | of heart | of light,
Line 45 is iambic pentameter with the second iamb (da-DUM) switched out for a spondee (DUM-DUM):
Cannot | bear ve- | ry much | real- | ity.
Pentameter, then, serves as a kind of home base to which the poem occasionally returns. Some passages, however, use considerably longer lines (for example, the stanza beginning "At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless") or shorter lines (see: the final stanza):
In the first stanza of Part II, the poem switches briefly to iambic tetrameter (four feet, da-DUM rhythm). Readers can hear this in lines 54-55:
The dance | along | the ar- | tery
The cir- | cula- | tion of | the lymphLike changes in a piece of music (remember, Eliot's sequence is modeled on musical Quartets), this rhythmic variety helps hold the reader's attention and interest. It also suits the content of particular passages; for example, the longer lines of the "At the still point" passage suit the speaker's free-flowing meditation, while the tetrameter in Part II suits that stanza's rapid sequence of images.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Burnt Norton" has no regular rhyme scheme, as it's mostly free verse. It does contain occasional rhymed passages, notably the first stanza of Part II ("Garlic and sapphires [...] among the stars") and the two stanzas of Part IV ("Time and the bell [...] turning world"). Even these passages do not fall into a predictable rhyme pattern, however. Eliot was an experimental modernist, after all, and in this poem, he is charting his own way through inherited spiritual and philosophical traditions (e.g., articulating his idiosyncratic vision of Christianity).
The occasional bursts of rhyme here coincide with passages of affirmation: for example, rhyme enters Part II just as the speaker claims that earthly events follow a "pattern," and human fate is "figured" (prefigured) by the "stars." In other words, rhyme introduces an element of order that mirrors the cosmic order the speaker is describing. Similarly, Part IV ends with a peaceful vision of "silenc[e]," "still[ness]," and "light," and rhyme seems to reflect this sudden sense of harmony.
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Speaker
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Scholars and critics generally associate the speaker of "Burnt Norton" with T. S. Eliot himself, especially as the Four Quartets are sprinkled with autobiographical references. (For example, "Burnt Norton" is the name of a ruined manor Eliot visited with his love interest Emily Hale in 1934; the poem's second section, "East Coker," is named after the Eliot family's ancestral village in England; and the third section, "The Dry Salvages," mentions places that were important to Eliot's childhood.) The poem also refers to several sites in "London," where Eliot lived during the writing of Four Quartets.
The speaker refers to himself in the first-person singular (as "I") and seems to address the reader in the second person (as "you"). Some speakers in other, previous Eliot poems use the same pronouns; for example, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" begins, "Let us go then, you and I." But "Prufrock" is a dramatic monologue whose fictional speaker, Prufrock, seems to be talking to himself, and most of Eliot's previous speakers are dramatic characters as well. (The Waste Land is famously spoken by many different voices, none of whom are necessarily the poet himself.) Some critics consider "Burnt Norton" (or the Quartets in general) the first poem in which Eliot writes as an author straightforwardly addressing the reader.
This allows Eliot to communicate his religious/philosophical ideas directly, without the personas and complex dramatic ironies that filled his earlier poetry. This speaker is very conscious that "My words echo [...] in your mind." At the same time, the speaker is cautious about his own claim to authority, and does not "know" the ultimate "purpose" of his words—a warning that readers must process and judge Eliot's ideas for themselves.
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“Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Setting
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"Burnt Norton" features a number of settings, some of which seem more imaginary or symbolic than real.
The first of these is the "rose-garden," mentioned in Part I (lines 12-43) and in later passages as well (lines 88 and 172-178). According to the speaker, this garden lies "Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened," so it may be more fantasy than reality. Indeed, it seems to contain the "echoes" and "invisible" ghosts of "children," so it may represent a wished-for state of childhood innocence and happiness.
At the same time, the garden's realistic flaws—its "dry concrete, brown edged," for example—also invoke the real-life garden of the ruined country manor known as Burnt Norton, which Eliot visited before writing the poem.
Lines 88-90, as well, suggest that the garden may be part of a real memory, and one of various significant memories in the speaker's life:
[...] the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall [...]The garden, in other words, seems to be a mix of the imaginary and real, the idyllic and the imperfect. The speaker describes it as containing ghosts and a talking bird, so it's probably part fiction. But the bird's statement that humans love escaping "reality" can cut two ways: it might suggest that the garden is an escapist fantasy, or that it's too real for the speaker's liking (due to its reminders of decay).
Later, in lines 93-116, the poem describes the "gloomy" setting of early 20th-century London, including a number of its individual neighborhoods:
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate.The speaker describes this city as "a place of disaffection"—that is, disenchantment—as well as a "twittering world" of meaningless "distraction." It's a place of "metalled ways" (lines 127-129), implying that it's part of a cold, mechanized modern civilization. It's a time-haunted ("time-ridden"), spiritually "unhealthy" scene, from which the speaker urges an escape into the spiritual life.
There's also an important juxtaposition here between the countryside and the city. While Burnt Norton is decayed, it holds out some hope of renewal and redemption, while London—where Eliot lived—seems utterly grim, to the point where "souls" must elaborately purify themselves in order to be redeemed.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton”
Literary Context
"Burnt Norton," by poet, playwright, and critic T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), is the first section of the four-part sequence called Four Quartets. It was published in 1936; the full sequence, which also includes "East Coker" (1940), "The Dry Salvages" (1941), and "Little Gidding" (1942), appeared in book form in 1943.
Four Quartets appeared toward the end of the early 20th-century literary period known as modernism. Modernist writers such as Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf challenged the literary norms of the 1800s. These norms were both formal—related to the structure and style of poems, plays, and novels—and social: sex, drugs and alcohol, feminism, and working-class life all became new subjects for serious literature during the modernist period.
Eliot's initial influences were mainly French poets of the late 19th century, such as Jules Laforgue and Stéphane Mallarmé. He experimented skillfully with the emerging techniques of vers libre (English: free verse) and continued adapting these techniques throughout his career (as in Four Quartets). As his life progressed, he converted to Anglicanism and grew increasingly committed to his religious faith. His poetry reflected these changes, and Four Quartets is often read as a summing up of his spiritual and philosophical beliefs.
Eliot's influence on Western literary culture was immense. Poems like Four Quartets and "The Waste Land" cast a long shadow over 20th-century writing, and Eliot was regarded as the premier literary critic and tastemaker of his era. His achievements won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
Historical Context
The early 20th century was a time of profound change. Inventions such as the airplane and telephone altered daily life significantly in a short time. Cities grew denser as people began flocking from the countryside to urban centers. New technologies and industries improved the quality of life for some while creating polluted environments and unsafe working conditions for others.
Eliot's career began (with Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917) in the middle of World War I (1914-1918). The immense violence of the "Great War" shook ideals inherited from the previous century and shattered the old European order. The new technologies that had seemingly improved life for so many were used to kill on an industrial scale.
All these developments made modernist artists deeply skeptical of the modern world. At the same time, modernist thinking stirred up animosity towards older ways of living; after all, it was the old European empires that had led the continent into war.
Many modernists, including Eliot, wrestled with the problem of belief in an age of mass death and declining religious belief. As an American poet who resettled in England, then spent most of his life in Europe, Eliot also sought novel ways of depicting and addressing his increasingly globalized, yet fractured society.
Four Quartets confronts the period leading up to and during the Second World War (1939-1944), which resulted in tens of millions of deaths and massive social upheaval. "Burnt Norton," the earliest poem in the sequence, appeared in the midst of the global economic slump known as the Great Depression (1929-1939). The poem's portrait of London's "strained time-ridden faces," skepticism of the "metalled ways" of modern technology, and critique of a society "Distracted from distraction by distraction" reflect Eliot's general pessimism about 20th-century culture. Unlike much of Eliot's earlier poetry, however, Four Quartets strives toward a more redemptive vision.
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More “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to T. S. Eliot read "Burnt Norton."
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Another Reading — Actor Ralph Fiennes reads the poem aloud.
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A T. S. Eliot Documentary — Watch a BBC film about the life and career of the poet.
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The Poet's Life — A short biography of T. S. Eliot at the Poetry Foundation.
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Modernism: An Introduction — An overview of the literary movement that Eliot helped define.
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Eliot's New York Times Obituary — How Eliot was remembered by fellow poets and critics at the time of his death in 1965.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
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