In the first of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, ‘Burnt Norton,' appear the following lines:
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Eliot returns to the image of the garden and the children in the last of this cycle, ‘Little Gidding‘:
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness…
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.