Eliot’s rose garden: Some phenomenology and theology in “Burnt Norton”:

T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets respond to and gradually modify the experience that is evoked in the first part of “Burnt Norton”. Yet the well-known rose garden scene has been variously interpreted, the “presences” being either naturalized or regarded as supernatural entities. A phenomenological reading of the rose garden scene gives us a more secure, and also a more nuanced, understanding of what happens in the rose garden, and therefore allows us to develop a fuller and more reliable reading of Four Quartets.