‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) was conceived as a separate poem, with no thought of the three quartets which were to follow from 1940 to 1942. It is a meditation in varying moods on time and memory, and it attempts, with only occasional recourse to traditional religious language and imagery, to create an idea, and a sense, of absolute value which is outside time. It can be described as a philosophic poem, but it is not philosophy; rather it uses elements of philosophic language as part of a process of meditation which attempts to evoke the experience of consciousness rather than present a set of propositions. It contains propositions, but these are only a part of the whole. They are validated (if at all) not by argument or demonstration, but by the complete experience of the poem to which they contribute. The truth at which the poem and the later Quartets aims is that which Wordsworth described as the object of poetry in general, truth ‘not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion: truth which is its own testimony …’ Ultimately the poem will succeed just as far as, by responding to its feeling, we are led to accept its truth – though there may be many intermediate points of partial response and assent on this side of that acceptance.