Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton Poem Rhyme Scheme

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I	A
	-
Time present and time past	B
Are both perhaps present in time future	C
And time future contained in time past	B
If all time is eternally present	D
All time is unredeemable	E
What might have been is an abstraction	F
Remaining a perpetual possibility	G
Only in a world of speculation	F
What might have been and what has been	H
Point to one end which is always present	D
Footfalls echo in the memory	G
Down the passage which we did not take	I
Towards the door we never opened	J
Into the rose garden My words echo	K
Thus in your mind	L
But to what purpose	M
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves	N
I do not know	K
Other echoes	O
Inhabit the garden Shall we follow	K
Quick said the bird find them find them	P
Round the corner Through the first gate	Q
Into our first world shall we follow	K
The deception of the thrush Into our first world	R
There they were dignified invisible	E
Moving without pressure over the dead leaves	N
In the autumn heat through the vibrant air	S
And the bird called in response to	T
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery	G
And the unseen eyebeam crossed for the roses	U
Had the look of flowers that are looked at	V
There they were as our guests accepted and accepting	W
So we moved and they in a formal pattern	X
Along the empty alley into the box circle	E
To look down into the drained pool	E
Dry the pool dry concrete brown edged	Y
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight	Z
And the lotos rose quietly quietly	G
The surface glittered out of heart of light	Z
And they were behind us reflected in the pool	E
Then a cloud passed and the pool was empty	G
Go said the bird for the leaves were full of children	F
Hidden excitedly containing laughter	C
Go go go said the bird human kind	L
Cannot bear very much reality	G
Time past and time future	C
What might have been and what has been	H
Point to one end which is always present	D
	-
II	A
	-
Garlic and sapphires in the mud	A2
Clot the bedded axle tree	G
The trilling wire in the blood	A2
Sings below inveterate scars	B2
Appeasing long forgotten wars	C2
The dance along the artery	G
The circulation of the lymph	D2
Are figured in the drift of stars	B2
Ascend to summer in the tree	G
We move above the moving tree	G
In light upon the figured leaf	E2
And hear upon the sodden floor	F2
Below the boarhound and the boar	F2
Pursue their pattern as before	F2
But reconciled among the stars	B2
	-
At the still point of the turning world Neither flesh nor fleshless	B2
Neither from nor towards at the still point there the dance is	B2
But neither arrest nor movement And do not call it fixity	A2
Where past and future are gathered Neither movement from nor towards	B2
Neither ascent nor decline Except for the point the still point	A2
There would be no dance and there is only the dance	B2
I can only say there we have been but I cannot say where	S
And I cannot say how long for that is to place it in time	G2
The inner freedom from the practical desire	C
The release from action and suffering release from the inner	C
And the outer compulsion yet surrounded	A2
By a grace of sense a white light still and moving	W
Erhebung without motion concentration	F
Without elimination both a new world	A2
And the old made explicit understood	A2
In the completion of its partial ecstasy	B2
The resolution of its partial horror	C
Yet the enchainment of past and future	C
Woven in the weakness of the changing body	B2
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation	F
Which flesh cannot endure	H2
Time past and time future	C
Allow but a little consciousness	B2
To be conscious is not to be in time	G2
But only in time can the moment in the rose garden	F
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat	A2
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall	E
Be remembered involved with past and future	C
Only through time time is conquered	A2
	-
III	A
	-
Here is a place of disaffection	F
Time before and time after	C
In a dim light neither daylight	A2
Investing form with lucid stillness	B2
Turning shadow into transient beauty	B2
With slow rotation suggesting permanence	B2
Nor darkness to purify the soul	E
Emptying the sensual with deprivation	F
Cleansing affection from the temporal	E
Neither plenitude nor vacancy Only a flicker	C
Over the strained time ridden faces	B2
Distracted from distraction by distraction	F
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning	W
Tumid apathy with no concentration	F
Men and bits of paper whirled by the cold wind	A2
That blows before and after time	G2
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs	B2
Time before and time after	C
Eructation of unhealthy souls	B2
Into the faded air the torpid	A2
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London	F
Hampstead and Clerkenwell Campden and Putney	B2
Highgate Primrose and Ludgate Not here	I2
Not here the darkness in this twittering world	A2
	-
Descend lower descend only	B2
Into the world of perpetual solitude	A2
World not world but that which is not world	A2
Internal darkness deprivation	F
And destitution of all property	B2
Desiccation of the world of sense	B2
Evacuation of the world of fancy	B2
Inoperancy of the world of spirit	A2
This is the one way and the other	C
Is the same not in movement	A2
But abstention from movement while the world moves	B2
In appetency on its metalled ways	B2
Of time past and time future	C
	-
IV	E2
	-
Time and the bell have buried the day	A2
The black cloud carries the sun away	A2
Will the sunflower turn to us will the clematis	B2
Stray down bend to us tendril and spray	A2
Clutch and cling	W
Chill	E
Fingers of yew be curled	A2
Down on us After the kingfisher's wing	W
Has answered light to light and is silent the light is still	E
At the still point of the turning world	A2
	-
V	E2
	-
Words move music moves	B2
Only in time but that which is only living	W
Can only die Words after speech reach	J2
Into the silence Only by the form the pattern	X
Can words or music reach	J2
The stillness as a Chinese jar still	E
Moves perpetually in its stillness	B2
Not the stillness of the violin while the note lasts	B2
Not that only but the co existence	B2
Or say that the end precedes the beginning	W
And the end and the beginning were always there	S
Before the beginning and after the end	A2
And all is always now Words strain	K2
Crack and sometimes break under the burden	F
Under the tension slip slide perish	L2
Decay with imprecision will not stay in place	B2
Will not stay still Shrieking voices	B2
Scolding mocking or merely chattering	W
Always assail them The Word in the desert	A2
Is most attacked by voices of temptation	F
The crying shadow in the funeral dance	B2
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera	M2
	-
The detail of the pattern is movement	A2
As in the figure of the ten stairs	B2
Desire itself is movement	A2
Not in itself desirable	E
Love is itself unmoving	W
Only the cause and end of movement	A2
Timeless and undesiring	W
Except in the aspect of time	G2
Caught in the form of limitation	F
Between un being and being	W
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight	A2
Even while the dust moves	B2
There rises the hidden laughter	C
Of children in the foliage	N2
Quick now here now always	B2
Ridiculous the waste sad time	G2
Stretching before and after	C

T. S. Eliot

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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