Philip Larkin's Poetics

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Poems  Going   Going is one of the earliest Larkin poems in print. High Windows  This poem is from the collection by the same name. It's a good example of the cynical wonder that we see in a lot of Larkin's poems. The final lines of the poem are particularly beautiful, and also surprising in contrast to the beginning of the poem. The little lives of earth and form   One of the later poems, this was not published until after Larkin's death.     Larkin poems from other websites       Going There is an evening coming in Across the fields, one never seen before, That lights no lamps. Silken it seems at a distance, yet When it is drawn up over the knees and breast It brings no comfort. Where has the tree gone, that locked Earth to the sky? What is under my hands, That I cannot feel? What loads my hands down? from Collected Poems, 1988.   Back to top     High Windows When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-- Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest.  He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. from High Windows, 1974.   Back to top       'The little lives of earth and form' The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm,      Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness      Of den, and hole, and set. And this identity we feel - Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -      Will link us constantly; I see the rock, the clay, the chalk, The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,      And it is you I see. from Collected Poems, 1988. Back to top Larkin's poems available from other sites This Be the Verse First Sight An Arundel Tomb At Grass Church Going To Failure Days  (At the end of this poem there are several brief comments about the poem and about Larkin's writing in general.) Back to top

 

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