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Burnt Norton IV · Line 6 ·Fingers of yew be curled
The yew is the tree of English churchyards: very long-lived, evergreen and poisonous, it has long stood for both death and continuing life. Its chill fingers curling down make the lyric’s darkness explicit — a question about death asked in a garden at dusk. The yew recurs at the end of The Dry Salvages and in Little Gidding V, where the moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration.