Four Quartets is a sequence of four long poems, Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding, published together in 1943. Each is named for a place that mattered to the poet and is built in five sections, with a musical sense of theme and variation. The poems reflect on time, memory, history, language and the possibility of spiritual understanding, set against wartime England. The style is quieter and more meditative than his early work. Many readers and critics regard it as his greatest achievement.
Quotes
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past.
Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still.