Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, Quartets are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. Eliot started writing "East Coker" in 1939, and modeled the poem after "Burnt Norton" as a way to focus his thoughts. The poem served as a sort of opposite to the popular idea that The Waste Land served as an expression of disillusionment after World War I, though Eliot never accepted this interpretation. The poem focuses on life, death, and continuity between the two