- Theme
Burnt Norton II · Line 43 ·Only through time time is conquered
The resolution of Burnt Norton II, and one of the keys to the whole sequence. The timeless cannot be reached by escaping time but only through it — through memory, through the moments in which it is glimpsed, and (in the Christian terms of the later quartets) through the Incarnation, eternity entering history. The line’s own repetition of ‘time’ enacts the passage through.
Sources Gardner 1949 (locator to be verified)