The trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The Trees is a twelve line poem which compares the life cycle of a tree to a human's life experience. It contains three stanzas, each containing four lines. The rhyme scheme appears in the pattern: A B B A - C D D C - E F F E.
In the first stanza, it is Spring, and the trees are starting to develop. The buds are starting to flower and are following the natural cycle that a flower goes through. The 'greenness' not only refers to the colour of the trees, but the natural innocence and naivety they carry. They are new to the world and are unaware of the beautiful cycle of life they go through. Green also has connotations of envy, relating to the narrator's feelings about the tree's life cycle.
In the second stanza, Larkin questions the reality of their life cycle. It presents the idea that the trees are not new at birth, yet they can disguise their previous death, and have a 'trick' to display youth and beauty. Similarly, human beings try to disguise their age, less successfully, with cosmetics, plastic surgery etc. You can only know the age of a tree by looking at the 'rings of grain', yet in a human being, age is evident through appearance: wrinkles, grey hair etc.
The poem contains onomatopoeia relating to leaves almost violently rustling in the wind. 'thresh' being an example of this. The trees are personified throughout the poem, describing them as being 'born' and 'relaxing'. The last line brings a sense of envy towards the trees. Larkin presents the quality of being able to begin again, and start afresh, as being something that humans would like to have. If we could start again how would we act? Would we do things differently?
Larkin also displays this sense of enviousness of 'rebirth' in other poems of his. 'Sad Steps' is another poem in the 'High Windows' collection which presents the moon as having the ability to start again, yet the narrator still has to face his own mortality.
Main themes presented in the poem: Immortality, Rebirth, The struggle of mortality, Only having one chance at life, The magical ability to disguise.
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This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
This Be The Verse is a twelve line poem, in which Larkin presents the toxic cycle of life to try and warn future generations from procreating. Larkin presents an argument for nurture in that he states 'they fill you up' suggesting that we are an empty canvas at birth.
Larkin uses his typical accessible colloquial language in the use of 'they fuck you up'. This enables everybody to read and understand Larkin's poetry ensuring it goes further, implying that Larkin wanted to send this message out to all.
Despite Larkin vilifying parents in the statement 'They fuck you up', with the use of direct address in 'you' to make the reader feel victimised, he also defends them by stating 'they were fucked up in turn'. This shifts the blame onto the cycle, suggesting that it is a tradition to wreck your children, yet Larkin shows there is a way out of it, using an imperative sentence to influence the reader to take his advice.
In referring to his grandparents, or grandparents in general, as 'soppy-stern'. This oxymoron emphasises the overprotectiveness which has inevitably, in turn, been passed down to their children.
'Man hands on misery to man' demonstrates that misery is an inherent part of life, there is no avoiding it. The 'costal shelf' represents the underwater land , suggesting with each generation the misery grows deeper through the generations
Main themes: Toxic cycle of life, Misery, Human beings being doomed, Ending civilisation.
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Sad Steps
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part the thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
I part the thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Both of the poems acknowledge the moon as a powerful entity, yet whilst Sidney shows respect for the moon, Larkin shows an envy of its immortality and a fear of its power.
The narrator is envious of the moon's singleness and the cycle it goes through. It starts as nothing, growing full and then becomes nothing again. This never-ending cycle suggests an immortality which Larkin lusts after. Additionally, the narrator is envious of youth, because the young are blissfully unaware of the hardships of life and their own mortality.
The moon embodies a inhuman strength, boldness and beauty, all of which the narrator wishes he possessed. At the beginning, the narrator is angered and frightened by the moon, but at the end he accepts his own mortality and is in awe of the moon.
Main themes: Loneliness of age and death, Immortality and Mortality, Youth, The Moon (Nature).
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Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me) --
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up till then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) --
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
With Annus Mirabilis translating from Latin into 'Years of wonder', the poem speaks of a new era of open-mindedness about sex.
Larkin suggests the start of this era was 'Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP.' This refers to thee removal of the ban of the controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The novel was initially banned because of its sexual content.
'Which was rather late for me' indicates Larkin's age of 41 in 1963, which could have prevented him from embracing the change, or could have made him envious of the youth at that time, growing up in an age that accepts sexuality. Suggesting sorrow that the narrator could not be fully a part of this experience.
In the second stanza, Larkin explains that before this, sex was a taboo subject. The mention of the 'ring' could be a reference to sex being acceptable within marriage but condemned outside it, or more explicitly a metaphor for a women's genitalia, suggesting this is the reason for marriage.Yet this new era of 'enlightenment' allowed sex to be more openly accepted, and prevented unhappy marriages.
Main themes: Sexual intercourse, Freedom, Movement, Envy, Progression.
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Main themes: Sexual intercourse, Freedom, Movement, Envy, Progression.
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Cut Grass
Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
Cut Grass is packed full of imagery, foreshadowing the inevitability of death. The cutting of grass, the extraction of vibrancy of the plants in June demonstrates the brutality of death and how it has a total disregard of all of its surroundings. However, Larkin shows there I some hope in death at the latter stages of the poem.
The narrator is not mentioned, with no address to 'I', yet there is a seeing eye observing every minuscule detail in its appreciation of nature. The narrator uses the onomatopoeic words 'cut' and the word 'frail' in the first line. 'Cut' implies brutality and ruthlessness, whilst 'lies frail' shows the weakness and vulnerability this causes. Larkin influences the reader to evoke sympathy for the grass, in his vivid imagery.
The narrator is not mentioned, with no address to 'I', yet there is a seeing eye observing every minuscule detail in its appreciation of nature. The narrator uses the onomatopoeic words 'cut' and the word 'frail' in the first line. 'Cut' implies brutality and ruthlessness, whilst 'lies frail' shows the weakness and vulnerability this causes. Larkin influences the reader to evoke sympathy for the grass, in his vivid imagery.
Larkin juxtaposes 'brief breath' with 'long death', demonstrating that life is comparatively short with the eternity of death. Death is moving 'at summer's pace', a slow leisurely process which disregards its effect on nature.
Larkin ends the poem with movement, which suggests that despite the length of death, is not necessarily final, perhaps suggesting that there is an afterlife or something to that effect.
Main themes: Death, Life, Duration, Nature, Brutality, Afterlife.
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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.
High Windows was written in 1967, amidst the 'Summer of love' in London, which introduced drug use and open sex. During this time, religions hold on youth began to deteriorate, with the sex and drug use questioning the authority of the Church.
The title 'High Windows' has both a literal and metaphorical meaning. Literally, they could be stained glass windows of a church. But metaphorically they could be symbolic of how this time is above that of the time before.
Larkin admires the youths ventures, and encourages the rebellion from religion further with contraceptive 'pills' which religion is against. This is 'paradise' for the narrator, he no longer needs to feel ashamed of his sexual conquests. Larkin presents a very anti-convention view, which he seems to believe himself as he chose to never marry.
The narrator assumes that everybody shares his view in that 'everyone old has dreamed of all their lives'. He presents courtship as outdated pushing 'bonds and gestures' to one side.
A weight seems to have lifted off the narrator's shoulders in that he does not have to have a fear of God and being condemned for his choices. The age of sexual repression is over mush to the narrator's joy.
Larkin also suggests a hypocrisy in religion as priests can have casual sex yet condemn everybody else for it. The High Windows of the church could be suggesting that people are starting to look to the outer world, leaving religion behind to seek freedom and happiness.
Main themes: Sexual freedom, Religion, Movement, Change in attitudes, Changing of conventions.
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