But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

The juxtaposition of the dead rose-leaves and the living
rose-garden effected by these lines which introduce the vision
is characteristic: a way of urging the reader to see and to feel
and at the same time maintaining a detachment from nostalgic
indulgence. It conveys the doubt and hesitation of the
opening in imagery.

The allegory of the rose-garden is presented as poignantly
as that scene in The Waste Land:

--Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth
garden, . . .

Here, too, is the heart of light: ¹

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light, . . .
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

This is the joy of Eden, shattered when the divine light is
withdrawn.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

The symbolism used by Eliot recurs and gathers richness
as it does so. We have only to remember the hermit-thrush
of The Waste Land to understand the phrase the deception of
the thrush: to begin with, the poet half feels that it is only
leading him up the garden path. The phrase also refers to
the elusive darting of the bird, previously suggested in the
verse. And the bird of this poem reminds us of the one
suggested in Ash-Wednesday in allusion to Grimm's tale, TheJuniper-Tree

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