Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin Poems

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
...

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
...

Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
...

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
...

Beyond the dark cartoons
Are darker spaces where
Small cloudy nests of stars
Seem to float on air.
...

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
...

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
...

8.

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
...

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
...

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
...

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,
...

Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
...

'Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain
consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to
...

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
...

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
...

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
...

17.

There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.
...

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
...

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
...

New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books,too,
Old eyes renew;
...

Philip Larkin Biography

Born in 1922 in Coventry, England. He attended St. John's College, Oxford. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945 and, though not particularly strong on its own, is notable insofar as certain passages foreshadow the unique sensibility and maturity that characterizes his later work. In 1946, Larkin discovered the poetry of Thomas Hardy and became a great admirer of his poetry, learning from Hardy how to make the commonplace and often dreary details of his life the basis for extremely tough, unsparing, and memorable poems. With his second volume of poetry, The Less Deceived (1955), Larkin became the preeminent poet of his generation, and a leading voice of what came to be called 'The Movement', a group of young English writers who rejected the prevailing fashion for neo-Romantic writing in the style of Yeats and Dylan Thomas. Like Hardy, Larkin focused on intense personal emotion but strictly avoided sentimentality or self-pity. In 1964, he confirmed his reputation as a major poet with the publication of The Whitsun Weddings, and again in 1974 with High Windows: collections whose searing, often mocking, wit does not conceal the poet's dark vision and underlying obsession with universal themes of mortality, love, and human solitude. Deeply anti-social and a great lover (and published critic) of American jazz, Larkin never married and conducted an uneventful life as a librarian in the provincial city of Hull, where he died in 1985.)

The Best Poem Of Philip Larkin

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Philip Larkin Comments

Chris-ann Chikane 04 October 2012

I request your permission to include the attached extrac from poemhunter: Title: Night-Music by Philip Larkins.We want to use this and all subsequent editions of the above-referenced book, in all media of expression now known or later developed, and in all foreign language translations and other derivative works published or prepared by Mystar Education & Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd or its licensees, for distribution throughout the world, and also in versions made by non-profit organisations for use by blind or physically handicapped persons. Appropriate credit will be given on the imprint page of the book. If specific credit is required, please provide this. If the permission request relates to an image, please send us a high-resolution JPEG, TIFF or PDF of the image, since this will ensure the quality of the image during printing. Kind Regards Chris-Ann Chikane chrism@starschools.co.za

13 39 Reply
Marcus Clements 22 June 2012

I am probably making a very silly error....I am unable to select Phillip Larkin’s poems; can anyone help?

28 20 Reply
Tai Chi Italy 16 July 2011

Well it wasn't mum and dad who phucked this poets poems up! It was poemshuntered down and deleted. Philip! if you are up there, curse them for their bad taste. with a smile from Tai, from his neck of the midland woods

24 15 Reply
Charlotte Chadwick 06 August 2009

Hi-the word anaesthetic is misspelled: 'anasthetic' in the Larkin poem 'Aubade' on this site. Please correct! Cheers.

14 10 Reply
Chris Guidon 18 June 2009

Oblivion, Ill drink to oblivion. A rutting alchemist just like the rest, my potent breath warms their swollen breast's, the differentiation between truth and lies blurred, and my eloquent post modernist jive now slurred, ...so, dazed... i drift into the night, head filled with romance, seduced by the city lights. larkin taught me my moral views, nescient i, ever obtuse; subscribed to the school of self abuse. Now the smoky sweet taste of vomit brings dawn. I write on the walls, the words 'Vacant' and 'Forlorn.'

9 6 Reply
Peter Henderson 15 April 2018

Larkin is like Fritos: you can read a book of his poems but nobody can read just one. Such a tonic!

2 2 Reply
Paul Geiger 29 November 2014

New, impressive biography out by James Booth. Reviewed in WSJ,11/28/14. Maybe Dan Reynolds should read.

19 9 Reply
Dan Reynolds 23 September 2014

You show some promise, but the archaic language lets you down. Try to read some good contemporary poets and expand your thoughts without the restriction of form.

14 43 Reply
Cody Dickerson 30 April 2013

How come Larkin's poem, This Be the Verse, is not in the poem list?

55 24 Reply
Chris-ann Chikane 04 October 2012

I request your permission to include extract from Poemhunter: Night Music by Philip Larkin We will use subsequent editions of the above-referenced book, in all media of expression now known or later developed, and in all foreign language translations and other derivative works published or prepared by Mystar Education & Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd or its licensees, for distribution throughout the world, and also in versions made by non-profit organisations for use by blind or physically handicapped persons. Appropriate credit will be given on the imprint page of the book. If specific credit is required, please provide this. If the permission request relates to an image, please send us a high-resolution JPEG, TIFF or PDF of the image, since this will ensure the quality of the image during printing. Please contact me Kind Regards Chris-Ann Chikane +27 11 018-5007 chrism@starschools.co.za

15 46 Reply

Philip Larkin Quotes

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

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