Symbol Analysis
Roses, like almost all of the speaker's symbols in this poem, are double-edged. On the one hand, roses represent love, rebirth, and the coming of a better time. They also have thorns, though, and can make our journey through life difficult if they block our path with their thick tangle of thorns. That said, the speaker actually ends "Four Quartets" with the line "And the fire and the rose are one." In this case, you get all of the destructive and purifying aspects of fire combined with all of the danger and beauty of the rose, making this final image a super-complex, yet also super-simple expression of the message of the entire poem.
The rose represents rebirth as flowers bloom in the springtime. It also represent violence with its thorns and with the coming fire, yet the fire also represents the purification that'll lead to a spring-like rebirth in all of our lives. All the while, the speaker is pulling together as many opposites as he can, trying desperately to give us a moment of spiritual clarity that sees (if only for a moment) into a world beyond opposites.
Roses Timeline
- 14: "Into the rose-garden. My words echo"
- 17: "Disturbing dust on a bowl of rose-leaves"
- 30-31: "And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses / Had the look of flowers that are looked at"
- 92: "But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden"
- 346: "Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars"
- 419: "The salt is on the briar rose"
- 527-528: "That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender / spray"
- 696-697: "Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash burnt roses leave"
- 827-828: "Nor is it an incantation / To summon the spectre of a rose"
- 876-877: "The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree / Are of equal duration"
- 903: "And the fire and the rose are one."