![]() ![]() Read the full text of “Four Quartets: Burnt Norton”. ![]() 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. Rather than accept this gloom as inevitable, the speaker seeks-and urges the reader toward-a vision of recaptured innocence and purity. 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). The poem was first published in 1936, and the Quartets as a whole appeared in book form in 1943. Eliot's book-length sequence Four Quartets. ![]()
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