"Burnt Norton" is a poem written by T.S. Eliot. The poem is the first of Eliot's "Four quartets"; first published in 1943. The title of the poem "Burnt Norton", is the name of a Gloucestershire manor house, the children mentioned in the poem are playing in the rose garden at this manor house.
"Burnt Norton" is a poem written by T.S. Eliot, I am going to be analysing the opening lines. The poem is the first of Eliot's "Four quartets"; first published in 1943. The title of the poem "Burnt Norton", is the name of a Gloucestershire manor house, the children mentioned in the poem are playing in the rose garden at this manor house.
In this poem Eliot explores the relationship of time and the Christian faith. He reached a wide audience as he was communicating the ideas in a more modern and contemporary style through the meditations on time and eternity, mans place through time and both the personal and General aspects of life. The poem contains a great deal of symbolism and imagery, such as, earth, air, fire, water and classical, historical and religious allusions.
Burnt Norton is a country house in the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire that Eliot visited in the summer of 1934. Set in the rose garden of the house, the poem addresses the pervasive theme of cyclical patterns in time. The opening lines, taken from a passage deleted from Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral (1935) contain both contradiction and ambiguity. The opening lines suggest that the eternal patterns of time are only slightly altered by individuals, and only very occasionally. One such moment occurs at the beginning of the poem, as the poet talks about the drained pools of the rose garden. The exploration of the Rose Garden by the children introduces the idea of the minds capacity for abstract thought.
The idea of time is the Central theme of "Burnt Norton" and by collapsing the divisions of time he introduces the concept of eternity. Eliot mentions that "all time is irredeemable" which leads to the thought that although there is eternity the past is not accessible except through memory. He also suggests that we are stuck in our own present we can see this when he says "the passage that we did not take" this emphasises that we live our life our way and although there are other lives that we could have followed we each have our own.
The poem is written in accentual, or strong-stress, metre (it has a fixed number of stresses and variable number of syllables) and is divided into five sections, this is a model that T.S. Eliot used for all the poems of The Four Quartets.
The four quartets although containing a somewhat pessimistic view end on a lighter tone "All manner of things shall be well." But his discussion throughout the Four Quartets of history effecting the present and the future is depressing as the emphasis seems to be on the worst things that have taken place in history as they have a greater impact on peoples lives.
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