for more â
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score
Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when
You try to get near the sea
In summer â¦
It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isnât going to last,
That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts â
First slum of Europe: a role
It wonât be so hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.
And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
Thereâll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.
Most things are never meant.
This wonât be, most likely: but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
That poem was written for the Department of the Environment. What Larkin didnât foresee was that one of the things that was going was the ability of government departments to spend money on poems.
Now a poem called â1914â, though the title is written in Roman numerals, as if it were carved on a war memorial.
MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheatâs restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word â the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
If poetry is the highest form of writing, itâs because it does so much with so little. That poem, only thirty-two lines, says as much as a play or a film.
In 1954, Larkin wrote a poem about work, in which he pictured it as a toad: âWhy should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?â This poem, written nearly ten years later, takes a mellower view, with Larkin now rather easier on himself.
Toads Revisited
Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,
Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses â
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesnât suit me,
Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,
Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets â
All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.
Think of being them!
Hearing the hours chime,
Watching the bread delivered,
The sun by clouds covered,
The children going home;
Think of being them,
Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
No friends but empty chairs â
No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.
Larkin relished dullness. âDeprivation is for meâ, he said famously, âwhat daffodils are for
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score
Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when
You try to get near the sea
In summer â¦
It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isnât going to last,
That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts â
First slum of Europe: a role
It wonât be so hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.
And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
Thereâll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.
Most things are never meant.
This wonât be, most likely: but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
That poem was written for the Department of the Environment. What Larkin didnât foresee was that one of the things that was going was the ability of government departments to spend money on poems.
Now a poem called â1914â, though the title is written in Roman numerals, as if it were carved on a war memorial.
MCMXIV
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheatâs restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word â the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
If poetry is the highest form of writing, itâs because it does so much with so little. That poem, only thirty-two lines, says as much as a play or a film.
In 1954, Larkin wrote a poem about work, in which he pictured it as a toad: âWhy should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?â This poem, written nearly ten years later, takes a mellower view, with Larkin now rather easier on himself.
Toads Revisited
Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,
Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses â
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesnât suit me,
Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,
Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets â
All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.
Think of being them!
Hearing the hours chime,
Watching the bread delivered,
The sun by clouds covered,
The children going home;
Think of being them,
Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
No friends but empty chairs â
No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.
Larkin relished dullness. âDeprivation is for meâ, he said famously, âwhat daffodils are for
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