1. Echo

    Burnt Norton I · Line 43 · the leaves were full of children

    Children hidden in the foliage, suppressing their laughter, are among the sequence’s most haunting images: they may be the children of the house, the children the walkers never had, or the speaker’s own childhood. They return at the end of Burnt Norton V and again in the closing lines of Little Gidding, where they are heard in the apple-tree — so that the last page of the sequence recalls this garden.

    Interpretive Garden Time

    Sources Rudyard Kipling (locator to be verified)

    See also Who are “they”? The hidden laughter

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