Burnt Norton

poem by Eliot

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Article History

Burnt Norton, poem by T.S. Eliot, the first of the four poems that make up The Four Quartets. “Burnt Norton” was published in Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936); it then appeared in pamphlet form in 1941 and was published with the remaining three poems of the The Four Quartets in 1943. It is a meditation on time and eternity.

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 Eliot deleted from his play Murder in the Cathedral (1935)—resonate with contradiction and ambiguity:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.