There are two Burnt Nortons: one was published as a single, freestanding poem in 1936 as the closing work in Collected Poems 1909–1935; the other was published eight years later at the beginning of a wartime serial poem, Four Quartets (1944). The first appeared at a time when there was no world war, and its author's avowed “anti-secularism” was at odds with the dominant literary-political ideologies of the day. The second was much more consonant with the new public mood, and would make its author the most influential living English writer for at least the next decade. Republication of the same text as the opening scene of a new poem created an internal division between two moments of historically situated writing and reading that effected far more of a transformation than mere repackaging might have done. This was not done without some confusion for readers, since by then it had also appeared as a pamphlet in the same year as The Dry Salvages, making some, like Kathleen Raine, think Burnt Norton was the second poem in the sequence. The publication of all four poems as a continuous series opening with Burnt Norton finally established its position in 1944. I will argue here that, on its reappearance, Burnt Norton is made to stand for a modernist temporal poetics which Four Quartets decisively brings to an end, with far-reaching effects on the subsequent history of British poetry.