Larkin Poems Flashcards
Mr bleaney: “Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,/Fall to within five inches of the sill,”
- curtains damaged worn -> fricatives convey this damage and worn nature of the room, ‘flowered curtain’ - an opportunity for life yet reality of different.
Mr bleaney: “window shows a strip of building land,/Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took/ My bit of garden properly in hand.”
- opportunity for life within the area -> decline of the area, reality vs optimism, hope/dreams vs decayed reality of the garden. Mundane description, bare, bleak, minimal, room of transient people -> not home. Tussocky - type of grass.
Mr bleaney: “Behind the door, no room for books or bags-/’T’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie/Where Mr Bleaney lay.” -
I’ll take’ - abrupt, acceptance, loss of identity between the last person and new person blends together - the tedious cycle of life - becoming constrained by the limitations of the room. Spatial Restriction
Mr bleaney: “stub my fags/On the same saucer-souvenir,”
‘fags’ - colloquial, saucer - images grounded in every day - a metaphor for self-sufficient routine, saucer-travel excitement with reality, new person is merging into mr bleaney
Mr bleaney: He kept on plugging at the four aways/Likewise their yearly frame”
pointless, repetitive, mundane nature of life - not really living just whiling away the time until die, Plugging - tedious, slow, continuous action - keep going, idiomatic phrase. scheduled,
Mr Bleaney: “Who put him up for summer holidays,” -
different times - weekly, yearly he attempts companionship and to be social - forced and not permanent, nothing exciting or close about these relationships, sparse contact - isolated existence. predictable, routine.
Mr bleaney: “That how we live measures our own nature, And at his age having no more to show”
- comfort that we all we end up in the same place no matter what we do, the persona doesn’t have answers, the persona begins to speculate that how we live measured our own nature, the persona - limited identity, perspective forced by the limiting environment,
Mr bleaney: “Than one hired box should make him pretty sure /He warranted no better”
Is it justified that you can measure someone’s life’s worth in one box - coffin, evidence of a life lived -> is there more to life than the things that surround them - honest ending of not knowing
N: “For nations vague as weed,”
vague - indistinct,lacks established identity, newly established states, subject to the environment around them moves around by geopolitical currents.
N: “Measuring love and money/Ways of slow dying.”
Life is a movement towards death- inevitable, time is universal .enjambment works to delay the crucial theme of death, acting as times arrow towards dying. slow dying - makes it a personal state as opposed to slowly which would externalise it - everyone is subject to time.
N: “On death equally slowly … Means nothing; others it leaves/.Nothing to be said.” -
Life can be long but it’s all incrementally heading towards death, time flows the same for everyone, death is not a concern or a worry - lack of comprehension, oblivious,lack of acknowledgment , words reflected at the bottom - visually creating a sense of circularity. Nothing to be said - finality , lacks the ability to change anything, speechless, helpless, existential, emptiness
L: “She kept her songs, they took so little space”
third person -> observer, impersonal, sense of detachment through the third person, ‘so little space’ - her life has shrunk as she ages, increasingly limited life,
L: “So they had waited, till in widowhood/She found them, looking for something else, and stood”
enjambment- rush of time into the present day, accidental stumbling into them -> the power of objects to allow access to memory perhaps not deliberately - an unexpected journey into the past. ascribing them a sense of purpose and agency as they patiently waited for their re-entry into her life.
L: “Relearning how each frank submissive chord/Had ushered in”
enjambment across the stanza break - journey into the past, memories carried on the tide of enjambment. Understanding the music. Oxymoronic “frank submissive” - complexity of love and contradictions of love
L: “And the unfailing sense of being young/Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein”
Freedom of being young, transported by the sentiments of love and longing in the chords back into the past - reminds her of the expansiveness of youth and the potentially of youth. ‘Spring woken’ - more opportunity, excitement, renewal, fertile, expansive natural image. Diametric opposition to the opening - in old age - closed limited space.
L: “Broke out, to show/Its bright incipience sailing above”
‘broke out’ - freed, ‘incipience’ - the early promises of love bringing discovery and new opportunities, sailing- connoting journey, voyaging, new frontiers, adventure, freedom -> a sense of danger associated with the metaphor - fear, warning, trepidation, idiomatically could also connote lost opportunity ‘ship has sailed’
L: “Still promising to solve, and satisfy,/And set unchangeably in order.”
sibilant tricolon - love as promises fix the problems and satisfy desires - warning against looking for solutions in love ~ depict love’s potential and hope when young. ‘set unchangeably’- symbolises domesticity, predictable organised, continuity way of life that occurs due to the roles and conventions of female, contrast to love songs which have variation but Larkin’s reality of love is fixed. Eva Larkin - anxious, welcomed the predictably of marriage as a source of comfort
L: “without lamely admitting how/It had not done so then, and could not now.”
all the promises of love and marriage whether in idealistic youth or now - the melancholy reality was that love cannot complete its promises. ‘Lamely’ - impertinence of love. Love is limited in its power. Sailing is the promise of uplifting idea movement of love lamely is the hobbled reality of the movement of love, realities of recapturing memories
F: “Women file”
- organised, detached, regulated - performative, “rimless glasses, silver hair,/ dark suit, white collar” - respected image of the individual, specifically curated image of professionalism
F: “Stewards tirelessly/Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands”
- Stewards - performative event, Synecdoche - (his hands and voice represent him as an individual), signalling the important parts of the healer - soothing voice, healing hands
F: “Within whose warm spring rain of loving care/each dwells some 20 secs”
enjambment - appears caring, nurturing. Spring - life giving. Both the healers and the god he represents loving care. cynical tone - commercial view of this experience, detached mechanical - precise measurement. Invitation to share
F: “Demands”, “directing god”, “Their hands are clasped abruptly; then, exiled”
demands - arrogant, perfunctory, commanding, directing god - arrogant, perfunctory, commanding. 2 - Vaguely dismissive. - abrupt - detached, perfunctory, exiled - insignificant, detached procedure
F: “They go in silence; some sheepishly stray”
in silence - sense of awe, in rapture embarrassment, could reflect reverence, submission, pun on the New Testament parable of the lost sheep - those who stray seem awkward and aimless, suggesting that faith healing does not offer the profound transformation it promises
F: “Thinking a voice/ at last calls them alone, that hands have come/ to lift and lighten”
physical manifestations of the healing taking place - intense emotional out-pouring, emphasising noise - gullible, could also reflect and undeveloped, innocent child - reawakened by this kindness, desire for comfort
F: “Thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief”
unflattering connotations of blort - undermining the nature of the experience, distasteful, critical view
F: “Whats wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake”
parallels the faith healer, distasteful- through fricative - moustached - harsh, unflattering - ongoing sense of performative salvation
F: “In everyone there sleeps/ a sense of life lived according to love” -
shifting into the universal, desire for love, childlike innocent desire for unconditional parental love, leads to be seeking belonging through religion
F: “As all they might have done had they been loved/that nothing cures”
Missed opportunities, disappointment of being unable to receive the possibilities potential in store - base human need for love and connection. simple sentence - caesura: emphasises finality - no fleeting, detached faith healer or religious intervention will heal the emptiness left by past
home is sad: “Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,/Shaped to the comfort of the last to go”
monosyllabic opening sentence/ simple sentence - it is universal in its appeal -> ‘home’, personifies the home, symbolising the sorrow or emptiness - portrays the symbiosis of people and place. “It stays as it was left” implies a sense of abandonment and stasis -> memories and feelings linger after someone leaves. enjambment - longing, time passed, waiting for life to return
Home is sad: “Instead, bereft/Of anyone to please, it withers so,/Having no heart to put aside the theft” -
sense of loss or emptiness, indicating that the home is now devoid of life and purpose, absence of those people means the home no longer serves its emotional function - steady detereious effect of decline and decay
Home is sad: “A joyous shot at how things ought to be,/Long fallen wide”
fleeting moment of optimism, idealistic image of the promise of happiness, excitement -> not guaranteed, caesura: introduces a sense of failure or disappointment, hope has collapsed. captures a shift from optimism to disillusionment.
Home is sad: “Look at the pictures and the cutlery./The music in the piano stool. That vase.”
domestic image, gentle instruction, pictures - memories, images become static and disconnected, lonely image of too much cutlery - may symbolise the functional, everyday aspects of family life that no longer hold any significance. Piano image - sense of loss and silence, isolation, limited existence -> minor sentence structure reflects the stillness and stagnation that has overtaken the house. The vase is emblematic of the home’s former life - emphasises image of an empty home
WW: “The river’s level drifting breadth began,/Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”
The continuity of the river mimics the journey. The expansiveness of the river, the slow, natural movement, reinforces the unhurried, observational tone of the poem. line paints a panoramic picture of the landscape. gives the sensation of being on a train and catching the sights from a window.
WW: “Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and/Canals with floatings of industrial froth;”
vast open countryside, expansive romantic countryside, pastoral imagery sullied by modernisation industrial pollution, beauty juxtaposed with decay, the fantasy of the pastoral imagery is tainted with gritty realism.
WW: “And rose: and now and then a smell of grass”/ “ acres of dismantled cars”/ “reek of buttoned carriage cloth”
details/sensory imagery - provide a realistic portrayal of the English countryside juxtaposed with betraying the industrial reality of England. sensory imagery turns rancid and rotten - plausible yet fantastic coincidence of the wedding parties
WW:“We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls/In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,/All posed irresolutely, watching us go”
we passed - detached tone, literally represents the journey - creating a sense of distance or separation between the two groups, transitory nature of the moment. Parodies of fashion - perhaps a cynical tone making the heels and Veil seem more like costumes than elegant attire. Power irresolutely - Reducing the people implying a level of artificiality or performance, inauthencity. Theatrical display. Watching us go - reinforces the frozen nature of the people frozen in celebration and the continual movement of the train.
WW: ““Waving goodbye/To something that survived it.”
waving goodbye - suggest movement and transition, a sense of detachment. Something that survived it— ardourous, endurance persistence, betraying the wedding ceremonies a challenge itself. gives it a certain universality.
WW: “The fathers with broad belts under their suits/And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;/An uncle shouting smut”
Larkin turns individual figures into types or cliches, greatly reductive, people are generalised through grotesque detail. Portraying everyday realities of individuals with an ironic or grotesque undertone, contrasts idealised images of weddings pursuing stark realism.
WW: “The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,/The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers that”
- jewellery substitutes - again reductive, superficial display. Colour image imagery - creative, vivid, chaotic visual using sensory imagery to portray the reality. The colours are somewhat mismatched for the wedding, as a spectacle rather than an elegant event
WW: “And, as we moved, each face seemed to define/Just what it saw departing: children frowned/At something dull;”
we - becomes a collective a sense that the narrator has become immersed too in the celebration a sense of collective hurrying. Children often symbolise joy and energy and are portrayed as disengaged, presenting a realistic depiction of weddings subverting expectations of a universally exciting occasion.
WW: “happy funeral”
oxymoron- the paradox to fit the performative ritualistic nature of both funerals and wedding - perhaps making them obligatory rites rather than genuine expressions. Perhaps a wedding is also a farewell ceremony to the youthful phase and single life.
“religious wounding. Free at last”
the juxtaposition between religious and wounding may suggest that marriage as a sacred institution may also involve a personal sacrifice. Free at last - as a start contrast to the wounding, freedom after the ceremony that steeped in tradition, expectations and duty.
WW: “I thought of London spread out in the sun,/Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:”
vast, expensiveness at the city, in the Sun brings warmth light and clarity; uses the pastoral image wheat to describe the industrial ordered city, a sense of dehumanisation of the city
WW: “A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain”
arrow shower - symbolises Cupid arrow, romantic illusion but perhaps a cliche. In classical mythology, Cupid never find a shower of arrows and perhaps this shower of arrows could signify danger or destruction (Martial imagery). Rain - life giving, conversion of threat into a positive hopeful message, could potentially be open to marriage that could go well or potentially disappointing. An alternative reading could be the ‘rain’ as symbolic of the inevitable disappointment of marriage
self: “Arnold is less selfish than I/ he married a woman to stop her getting away”
Simple short sentence - seems like an unarguable fact - irony ~ both characters driven by their own desires. Idea that women are confined and controlled by marriage, realistic view of marriage at the time. Presenting the selfless nature of Arnold in opening through idiomatic colloquialism depicts he may not be as selfless as portrayed as he chose to marry. Cynically stop women from leaving and loving someone else -> deliberately unromantic
Self: “The money he gets for wasting his life on work/she takes as her peak”
cynical view of women, women as costly - transactional view of marriage - women takes money in return, vilified portrayal of the women
Self: “It’s put a screw in this wall/ He has no time at all”-
Domestic/mundane image, demanding phrases in a colloquial, mundane language - deliberately cliched, stereotypical obligations of marriage. Dull, predictably of Arnold’s married life. Nagging etc often used as cultural comedy of time - modern day: sexist humour
Self: “Is there such a contrast/ he was out for his own ends”
pursuing diametric opposite. Volta in the poem alters the tone and perspective of Arnold. It superficially doesn’t sound serious due to the rhyming/colloquial language
Self: “He still did it for his own sake/ playing his own game”
Arnold naively rushed into obligations and the responsibility of marriage, persona self-understanding, conscious decision to avoid marriage, acknowledgement of his own capabilities, desires
Self: “Without them sending a van/ or i suppose i can”
could still go mad despite marriage, the life of loneliness could also lead to madness, perfect choice will never be true.
Kiddies: “On shallow straw, in shadless glass”
discomfort heightened by sibilance, exposed harsh, Exposed, harsh, struggle for survival, desolation, concerns on animal welfare
Kiddies: “No dark, no dam, no earth, no grass”
anaphora - intensification of deprivation, negation = inversion of the natural
Kiddies: “Living toys are something novel”
disregard parental negligence, animals =entertainment - rhymes with shovel: rhyme: ironic link between novel and death
Kiddies: “Mam, we’re playing funerals now”
innocence and ignorance, role play - a way to manage death, insignificance of life or death, jarring and troubling - heightened by italics
Days: “Days are where we live”
simple statement - end stopped: days as spatial rather than temporal - Larkin turns abstract entity of days into concrete, spatial (concretion of the abstract)
Days: “Time and time over … they are to be happy in”
monotony, repetition, routine, sense of days as place of happiness, positivity and joy -> hope (uncharacteristic of Larkin’s poetry: death, false promises etc), reinforces the cyclical nature of days, suggesting the relentless and rhythmic flow of time. importance of living in the present and finding joy in everyday moments.while we may focus on the immediate pursuit of happiness, the underlying awareness of our finite existence remains ever-present.
Days: “Where can we live but days”
days as a spatial entity, rhetorical question - ruminating on the possibility to live outside of time, death. Life and death are marked by time, and this emphasizes the inescapable nature of time,
Days: “Solving that question/brings the priest and the doctor”
Larkin cannot answer the question; philosophy and fact, religion and science attempt to provide answers (experts), eager to provide answers, deeper existential inquiry about the purpose of life and the inevitability of death
Days: “Running over the fields”
comic ending - eager to share insight, running over the fields - undermines their answer, Larkin dissatisfied with their answer. Long coats - visual representation of professional lab coats and vestments
T: “Talking in bed ought to be the easiest”
Physical intimacy does not equal emotional intimacy. Symbolises the speaker’s loneliness and emotional isolation, ‘ought’ - Subversion of the natural, effortless expectation of communication within partners - no met, Loss of communication. Bed - a place of expected comfort and intimacy.
T: “More and more time passes silently/ wind’s incomplete unrest builds and disperses clouds about the sky”
The enjambment from stanzas 2 to 3 reinforces this idea of stifling, silent passage of time. Gives us a sense of human stagnation in contrast with nature. growing emotional distance between the couple, repetition - ongoing, almost inevitable progression of a lack of communication. The natural imagery mirrors the emotional and inner tension between the couple - wind suggests restlessness, frustration, and movement. Buildup, which will eventually lead to the breakdown of their relationship.pathetic fallacy
T: An dark towns heap up on the horizon”
looming, accumulation of problems, threatening the future - uncertainty about the fate of their love, ‘dark’ - ominous or oppressive, lack of light - suggest a lack of clarity or understanding.
T: “Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and unkind.”
disappointment, double negative - language as limiting, confused by their feelings of loneliness, Rhyme scheme - incompatibility, the fantasy of ideal communication vs reality, reality of communication remains fragmented and insufficient.
A: “Closed like confessionals, they thread.”
religious imagery: a sense of secrecy, privacy within ambulance - literal representation, introducing the idea of death - traditional image of the absolving of sins in final moments.
A: “They come to rest at any kerb. All streets in time are visited.”
unaware of when fate changes, death. ‘Any’ - universalising - don’t discriminate. ‘Come to rest’ echoes ‘rest in peace’ traditional euphemism for death. inevitability, gloom, fragility of life juxtaposed with next line,momento mori, non discriminating nature of death.
A: “A wild white face.” and “Stowed.”
- colour imagery - alliteration - sense of panic, pain, overwhelmed - draining of life (blood) captured in alliteration. “stowing’-object potential future as stored in mortuary, hiding away.
A: “And sense the solving emptiness/that lies just under all we do.”
- sibilance - sense of life is meaningless, inevitability of death, life culminates in this, death as a conclusion, life as finite. Fragility of life -
A: “Permanent and blank and true.”
containing ideas of the blank nature of life, tricolon - rhetoric weight on true - emphasising the finality and reality of this truth
A: “They whisper at their own Distress.”/”deadened air”
that others death and injuries remind you of you mortality, a sense of surface level, persona realisation/recognition, deadened air foreshadows grave
A: “At last begin to loosen.Far/from the exchange of love to lie.”
- .enjambment - a sense of freedom, identity and defining connections loosening - emphasising the inevitable death
A: “unreachable inside a room”
- safe but perhaps beyond life, unreachable in terms of love, family relations, connections. enjambment - a lack of control over future, the inevitability of death - death is man’s ultimate fate
A: “Dulls to a distance, all that we are.”
- individual lives become inconsequential in the face of death, Larkin’s fear of death - vast nothingness
P: “Kneeling up on the sand/In tautened white satin.”
appealing to the male gaze, attractive girl selling something - deliberately uses sexual suggestive language, objectification of women, colour imagery of white - although objectified a sense of purity
P: “a hunk of coast, a/Hotel with palms”
—hunk—masculine presence, polysemic—even the background scenery is erotic, sexualised, and voyeuristic, palm—idealised image, deceitful/misleading image.
P: “She was slapped up one day in March.”
- aggressive, violent depiction of the poster being placed, sexualised, physicalised language of before seems softer -> degradation in society. Idiomatic colloquialism- could also refer to the slang term for promiscuous women - more crude, unpleasant turn
P: “Huge tits and a fissured crotch”, “A tuberous cock and balls”
- crudely demotic language choice, powerfully reductive, debasing and destructing, idealised sexualising of the first stanza had been distorted, .crudely unpleasant, ‘tuberous’ - grotesque,defacing, aggressive and unpleasant sexuality, phallic graffiti - distorted, lack of masculinity within society.
P: “Knife .. or something to stab right through./The moustached lips of her smile”
increasingly violent and aggressive (phallic) attack, attack on her idealised beauty, removal of purity, desexualised. Idealised feminine portrayal - fantasy - Become more masculine, perhaps a degradation of conventional femininity. After the war, independent women ~ more masculine
P: “She was too good for this life.”
- sense of genuine sadness, funeral saying/cliched, mourning the loss of idealised innocence. Innocence can’t last in society now - cultural tastes are changing, replaced with the crude, violent, sexually
P: “A great transverse tear’
homonym - mourning the positive representations of posters, change in society after the war - irreversible
w: “Wild oats”
“Sowing wild oats” traditionally refers to a young man engaging in casual or promiscuous relationships before settling down. This suggests a period of youthful experimentation and sexual freedom. signifies the speaker’s unfulfilled desires and the pursuit of an idealised passion that he never fully attained.
W: “A bosomy English rose/And her friend in specs I could talk to.”
fantasy/desire vs reality, cliched depiction of idealised woman, objectification, reductive, less intimidating, fantasy vs reality, more approachable. informal colloquialism adding to the casual tone.
W: “Faces in those days sparked/The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt”
- desire and attraction present, stimulating, fires everything, explosive imagery - sexuality, cycnical view - masculine youthful view of relationship as a conquest, romance as a violent confrontation. Euphemism - implying the intensity of youthful attraction. Suggests that the speaker perhaps sees things differently now, twenty years later.
W: “Agreement … That I was too selfish, withdrawn,/And easily bored to love.”
transactional image (Ruth bowman’s view) tricolon - bluntly listing negative traits, fantasy vs reality
W: “But it was the friend I took out,”
- beauty of the more attractive girl over several lines, there is an anti-climactic contrast in this line. creates bathos - highlights the speaker’s own lack of confidence to talk. Instead of a name, the speaker dehumanises her, reducing her to a secondary role in the speaker’s romantic narrative.contrast between idealised love and the mundane reality of the relationship.
W: “Gave a ten-guinea ring
- an engagement ring symbolises commitment, though the mention of its cost implies a transactional nature which lacks love or passion. Historical context: a ten-guinea ring was a significant expense,
W: “believe I met beautiful twice.”
- reduced to the adjective “beautiful”, emphasising the contrast to the other woman. simple syntax and short sentence structure underscores the straightforward, almost blunt nature of these encounters
W: “Well, useful to get that learnt.”
sarcastic tone to achieve understatement, the speaker is flippant and anti-climactic,
W: Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on./Unlucky charms, perhaps”
holding on to the memory of her, objectification of her, fantasy is holding back his reality, totemic way of preventing him. Mocking the timidity of the younger self, bemused of his younger self.
Afternoons: “Summer is fading”
heavy end stop - blunt, cyclical nature of time, decline, loss of the time of love and freedom, inevitable passage of time Pathetic fallacy - beauty and vibrancy of youth is disappearing
Afternoons: “The leaves fall in ones ….From trees bordering”
juxtapositions between decline and renewal, cyclical nature of time, enjambment shows the flow of time through seasons
Afternoons: “Young mothers assemble/At swing and sandpit/Setting free their children.”
sense of relief or enjoyment through releasing their children to the park - mother craving freedom?, sibilance - emphasises the dull repetition of their lives. Enjoyment for children - cyclical nature of life, swing - pendulum and sand timers was of measuring time, documenting time, assemble - connotes formal, regimented life - marriage leads to motherhood and loss of identity
Afternoons: “An estateful of washing,”
capture the domestic drudgery that lies behind these young mothers, constrained monotony of their lives, end stopped line - controlled
Afternoons: “Our Wedding, lying/Near the television:”
Juxtaposition between the marriage album with the television, fixture of the house, lacks pride of place just lying there - change of focus from the love and future aspirations, albums can recapture and acts as an escape just like TV, romance no longer a priority - disillusionment
Afternoons: “the wind/Is ruining their courting-places … all the lovers are in school”
- erosion of the courting places no longer there’s, physically changed, suggesting that love is something immature and not an adult notion - sense of disullionment in the domestic, mundane life of marriage
Afternoons: “children, so intent on/ Finding more unripe acorns,/Expect to be taken home.”
childish image - passage of time, the young are excited and desperate for the passing time and childish impatience of the change in time which contrast the young mothers who are deleterious about time being taken away. Expect - duty responsibility
Afternoons: “Their beauty has thickened./Something is pushing them/To the side of their own lives.”
change from fresh faced youth, carefree, time and change, may not notice th passage of time till to late, time as a natural force instrictically part of ones existence, young mothers lose spontaneity, abstract, intangible concept of time.
AT: “Side by side, their faces blurred.”
- concrete depiction of 2 figures in stones, time - worn the statutes, dimmed by time and their death. Personal identity lost to the amplified message of their love.
AT: “Habits”/ “As jointed armour, stiffened pleat.”
.habits - clothes, behaviour, proper - moral behaviour, ceremonial clothing - formality is very fixed, harsh looking. Literally stiff cause made of stone, makes the relationship look fabricated formal - symbolic. Monuments are constructs; they follow conventions not accuracy
AT: “Little dogs under their feet.”
dogs represent loyalty, fidelity,
AT: “With a sharp, tender shock,/His hand withdrawal, holding her hand.”
- Emotional, positive revelation, disruption of iambic meter mirrors narrators shock. Seen as romantic - faithfulness, subverts chivalric expectations and duty with the loving symbol - love into afterworld (perhaps, image that transcends time through love and memory ???)
AT: They would not think to lie so long.”
- did not know that monument would survival this long, prehaps a ‘pun’ this frozen depiction/emblems of faithfulness may not be representative of their relationship - construct of sculptor
AT: “A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace”
sickly, sweet sibilance- celebratory depiction: sculptor constructing image of faithfulness in attempt to make it more individual (equivocation) - fabrication. Commissioned, thrown off - emphasises the construction of the image. The intention behind the gesture was not to exemplifye their love. It was to rather prolong the fame of the names inscribed below in Latin.
AT: “How soon succeeding eyes begin to look not read.”
movement towards sermons and services in English rather than Latin, loss of Latin teaching in schools, persists despite time as the message cannot change, only came for a superficial look
AT: “Litter of birdcalls strewed the same/bone riddled ground.”
darkly comic image of graveyard, presents the narrow thin boundary between life (bird calls) and death.
AT: “The endless altered people came/ washing at their identity.”
- altered - people have changed with societal values and scientific changes however, the site remains the same. Alter - pun - represents the religious ground the monument is present in.: religion remains a constant. holy water - religion loses part of your identity, constrained by religious belief so loses their unique original identity. depicts Larkin’s religious scepticism. The earl and the countess can no longer be perceived as who they were - identity erored
AT: “ “helpless in the hollow of an unamorial age.”
A world that no longer knows anything about the history behind the monument and no longer connects with the values of
AT: “Above the scrap of history/only an attitude remains.”
a small fragment, remnant in history, undermines their significance ‘scrap’. As individuals they have been erased only their symbolic statement remains. image in stone is merely what’s left
AT: Time has transfigured them into/untruth.The Stone Fidelity.”
all that can be seen now is reductive and present an untrue message, transfiguration - religious imagery subverts the stagnated, frozen image - love is not a transfiguring force that allows it to continue throughout
AT: ““To prove our almost instinct, almost true,/What will survive of us is love.”
- prove - logical, experience based, instinct - not rational, instinctual, want to believe - the carefully curated image looks reassuring, We want to believe that we live in in our love, love is eternal - however the truth is it will fade, t isn’t true regardless how much we hope. Alternative reading: Love lives on in the memories of others, transcending force. Larkin writes a sceptical poem about life, death and love and what remains?
