- Theme
Burnt Norton I · Line 38 ·filled with water out of sunlight
The centre of the first movement, and one of the most discussed moments in the sequence. For an instant the dry pool seems full — filled not with water but with light, as heat and sun can make a dry surface shimmer. It is a moment of vision that the poem neither explains nor explains away: an illusion of the senses, or a glimpse of the timeless, or both.
The four quartets return again and again to such moments, which Eliot will later call ‘the moment in and out of time’ (The Dry Salvages V). The scene behind this page marks it with a brief shimmer.