Larkin Poems

Question 1

Mr bleaney: “Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,/Fall to within five inches of the sill,”

Answer 1

• curtains damaged worn -> fricatives convey this damage and worn nature of the room, ‘flowered curtain’ - an opportunity for life yet reality of different.

Question 2

Mr bleaney: “window shows a strip of building land,/Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took/ My bit of garden properly in hand.”

Answer 2

• 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.

Question 3

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.” -

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Mr bleaney: “stub my fags/On the same saucer-souvenir,”

Answer 4

‘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

Question 5

Mr bleaney: He kept on plugging at the four aways/Likewise their yearly frame”

Answer 5

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,

Question 6

Mr Bleaney: “Who put him up for summer holidays,” -

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Mr bleaney: “That how we live measures our own nature, And at his age having no more to show”

Answer 7

• 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,

Question 8

Mr bleaney: “Than one hired box should make him pretty sure /He warranted no better”

Answer 8

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

Question 9

N: “For nations vague as weed,”

Answer 9

vague - indistinct,lacks established identity, newly established states, subject to the environment around them moves around by geopolitical currents.

Question 10

N: “Measuring love and money/Ways of slow dying.”

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

N: “On death equally slowly … Means nothing; others it leaves/.Nothing to be said.” -

Answer 11

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

Question 12

L: “She kept her songs, they took so little space”

Answer 12

third person -> observer, impersonal, sense of detachment through the third person, ‘so little space’ - her life has shrunk as she ages, increasingly limited life,

Question 13

L: “So they had waited, till in widowhood/She found them, looking for something else, and stood”

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

L: “Relearning how each frank submissive chord/Had ushered in”

Answer 14

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

Question 15

L: “And the unfailing sense of being young/Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein”

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

L: “Broke out, to show/Its bright incipience sailing above”

Answer 16

‘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’

Question 17

L: “Still promising to solve, and satisfy,/And set unchangeably in order.”

Answer 17

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

Question 18

L: “without lamely admitting how/It had not done so then, and could not now.”

Answer 18

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

Question 19

F: “Women file”

Answer 19

• organised, detached, regulated - performative, “rimless glasses, silver hair,/ dark suit, white collar” - respected image of the individual, specifically curated image of professionalism

Question 20

F: “Stewards tirelessly/Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands”

Answer 20

• Stewards - performative event, Synecdoche - (his hands and voice represent him as an individual), signalling the important parts of the healer - soothing voice, healing hands

Question 21

F: “Within whose warm spring rain of loving care/each dwells some 20 secs”

Answer 21

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

Question 22

F: “Demands”, “directing god”, “Their hands are clasped abruptly; then, exiled”

Answer 22

demands - arrogant, perfunctory, commanding, directing god - arrogant, perfunctory, commanding. 2 - Vaguely dismissive. - abrupt - detached, perfunctory, exiled - insignificant, detached procedure

Question 23

F: “They go in silence; some sheepishly stray”

Answer 23

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

Question 24

F: “Thinking a voice/ at last calls them alone, that hands have come/ to lift and lighten”

Answer 24

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

Question 25

F: “Thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief”

Answer 25

unflattering connotations of blort - undermining the nature of the experience, distasteful, critical view

Question 26

F: “Whats wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake”

Answer 26

parallels the faith healer, distasteful- through fricative - moustached - harsh, unflattering - ongoing sense of performative salvation

Question 27

F: “In everyone there sleeps/ a sense of life lived according to love” -

Answer 27

shifting into the universal, desire for love, childlike innocent desire for unconditional parental love, leads to be seeking belonging through religion

Question 28

F: “As all they might have done had they been loved/that nothing cures”

Answer 28

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

Question 29

home is sad: "Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,/Shaped to the comfort of the last to go”

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Home is sad: “Instead, bereft/Of anyone to please, it withers so,/Having no heart to put aside the theft” -

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Home is sad: “A joyous shot at how things ought to be,/Long fallen wide”

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

Home is sad: “Look at the pictures and the cutlery./The music in the piano stool. That vase.”

Answer 32

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

Question 33

WW: “The river’s level drifting breadth began,/Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

WW: “Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and/Canals with floatings of industrial froth;”

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

WW: “And rose: and now and then a smell of grass”/ “ acres of dismantled cars”/ “reek of buttoned carriage cloth”

Answer 35

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

Question 36

WW:“We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls/In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,/All posed irresolutely, watching us go”

Answer 36

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.

Question 37

WW: "“Waving goodbye/To something that survived it.”

Answer 37

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.

Question 38

WW: “The fathers with broad belts under their suits/And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;/An uncle shouting smut”

Answer 38

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.

Question 39

WW: “The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,/The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers that”

Answer 39

- 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

Question 40

WW: “And, as we moved, each face seemed to define/Just what it saw departing: children frowned/At something dull;”

Answer 40

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.

Question 41

WW: “happy funeral”

Answer 41

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.

Question 42

“religious wounding. Free at last”

Answer 42

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.

Question 43

WW: “I thought of London spread out in the sun,/Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:”

Answer 43

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

Question 44

WW: “A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain”

Answer 44

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

Question 45

self: “Arnold is less selfish than I/ he married a woman to stop her getting away”

Answer 45

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

Question 46

Self: “The money he gets for wasting his life on work/she takes as her peak”

Answer 46

cynical view of women, women as costly - transactional view of marriage - women takes money in return, vilified portrayal of the women

Question 47

Self: “It’s put a screw in this wall/ He has no time at all”-

Answer 47

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

Question 48

Self: “Is there such a contrast/ he was out for his own ends”

Answer 48

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

Question 49

Self: “He still did it for his own sake/ playing his own game”

Answer 49

Arnold naively rushed into obligations and the responsibility of marriage, persona self-understanding, conscious decision to avoid marriage, acknowledgement of his own capabilities, desires

Question 50

Self: "Without them sending a van/ or i suppose i can”

Answer 50

could still go mad despite marriage, the life of loneliness could also lead to madness, perfect choice will never be true.

Question 51

Kiddies: “On shallow straw, in shadless glass”

Answer 51

discomfort heightened by sibilance, exposed harsh, Exposed, harsh, struggle for survival, desolation, concerns on animal welfare

Question 52

Kiddies: “No dark, no dam, no earth, no grass”

Answer 52

anaphora - intensification of deprivation, negation = inversion of the natural

Question 53

Kiddies: “Living toys are something novel”

Answer 53

disregard parental negligence, animals =entertainment - rhymes with shovel: rhyme: ironic link between novel and death

Question 54

Kiddies: “Mam, we’re playing funerals now”

Answer 54

innocence and ignorance, role play - a way to manage death, insignificance of life or death, jarring and troubling - heightened by italics

Question 55

Days: “Days are where we live”

Answer 55

simple statement - end stopped: days as spatial rather than temporal - Larkin turns abstract entity of days into concrete, spatial (concretion of the abstract)

Question 56

Days: “Time and time over … they are to be happy in”

Answer 56

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.

Question 57

Days: “Where can we live but days”

Answer 57

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,

Question 58

Days: “Solving that question/brings the priest and the doctor”

Answer 58

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

Question 59

Days: “Running over the fields”

Answer 59

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

Question 60

T: “Talking in bed ought to be the easiest”

Answer 60

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.

Question 61

T: “More and more time passes silently/ wind’s incomplete unrest builds and disperses clouds about the sky”

Answer 61

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

Question 62

T: An dark towns heap up on the horizon”

Answer 62

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.

Question 63

T: "Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and unkind."

Answer 63

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.

Question 64

A: “Closed like confessionals, they thread.”

Answer 64

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.

Question 65

A: “They come to rest at any kerb. All streets in time are visited.”

Answer 65

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.

Question 66

A: “A wild white face.” and “Stowed.”

Answer 66

- 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.

Question 67

A: “And sense the solving emptiness/that lies just under all we do.”

Answer 67

- sibilance - sense of life is meaningless, inevitability of death, life culminates in this, death as a conclusion, life as finite. Fragility of life -

Question 68

A: “Permanent and blank and true.”

Answer 68

containing ideas of the blank nature of life, tricolon - rhetoric weight on true - emphasising the finality and reality of this truth

Question 69

A: “They whisper at their own Distress.”/”deadened air”

Answer 69

that others death and injuries remind you of you mortality, a sense of surface level, persona realisation/recognition, deadened air foreshadows grave

Question 70

A: “At last begin to loosen.Far/from the exchange of love to lie.”

Answer 70

- .enjambment - a sense of freedom, identity and defining connections loosening - emphasising the inevitable death

Question 71

A: “unreachable inside a room”

Answer 71

- 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

Question 72

A: “Dulls to a distance, all that we are.”

Answer 72

- individual lives become inconsequential in the face of death, Larkin’s fear of death - vast nothingness

Question 73

P: “Kneeling up on the sand/In tautened white satin.”

Answer 73

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

Question 74

P: “a hunk of coast, a/Hotel with palms”

Answer 74

—hunk—masculine presence, polysemic—even the background scenery is erotic, sexualised, and voyeuristic, palm—idealised image, deceitful/misleading image. Beguiling reality

Question 75

P: “She was slapped up one day in March.”

Answer 75

- 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

Question 76

P: “Huge tits and a fissured crotch”, “A tuberous cock and balls”

Answer 76

- 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.

Question 77

P: “Knife .. or something to stab right through./The moustached lips of her smile”

Answer 77

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

Question 78

P: “She was too good for this life.”

Answer 78

- 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

Question 79

P: “A great transverse tear’

Answer 79

homonym - mourning the positive representations of posters, change in society after the war - irreversible

Question 80

w: “Wild oats”

Answer 80

“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.

Question 81

W: “A bosomy English rose/And her friend in specs I could talk to.”

Answer 81

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.

Question 82

W: “Faces in those days sparked/The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt”

Answer 82

- 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.

Question 83

W: “Agreement … That I was too selfish, withdrawn,/And easily bored to love.”

Answer 83

transactional image (Ruth bowman’s view) tricolon - bluntly listing negative traits, fantasy vs reality

Question 84

W: “But it was the friend I took out,”

Answer 84

- 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.

Question 85

W: “Gave a ten-guinea ring

Answer 85

- 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,

Question 86

W: “believe I met beautiful twice.”

Answer 86

- 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

Question 87

W: “Well, useful to get that learnt.”

Answer 87

sarcastic tone to achieve understatement, the speaker is flippant and anti-climactic,

Question 88

W: Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on./Unlucky charms, perhaps”

Answer 88

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.

Question 89

Afternoons: “Summer is fading”

Answer 89

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

Question 90

Afternoons: “The leaves fall in ones ....From trees bordering”

Answer 90

juxtapositions between decline and renewal, cyclical nature of time, enjambment shows the flow of time through seasons

Question 91

Afternoons: “Young mothers assemble/At swing and sandpit/Setting free their children.”

Answer 91

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

Question 92

Afternoons: “An estateful of washing,”

Answer 92

capture the domestic drudgery that lies behind these young mothers, constrained monotony of their lives, end stopped line - controlled

Question 93

Afternoons: “Our Wedding, lying/Near the television:”

Answer 93

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

Question 94

Afternoons: “the wind/Is ruining their courting-places … all the lovers are in school”

Answer 94

- 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

Question 95

Afternoons: “children, so intent on/ Finding more unripe acorns,/Expect to be taken home.”

Answer 95

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

Question 96

Afternoons: “Their beauty has thickened./Something is pushing them/To the side of their own lives.”

Answer 96

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.

Question 97

AT: “Side by side, their faces blurred.”

Answer 97

- 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.

Question 98

AT: “Habits”/ “As jointed armour, stiffened pleat.”

Answer 98

.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

Question 99

AT: “Little dogs under their feet.”

Answer 99

dogs represent loyalty, fidelity,

Question 100

AT: “With a sharp, tender shock,/His hand withdrawal, holding her hand.”

Answer 100

- 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 ???)

Question 101

AT: They would not think to lie so long.”

Answer 101

- 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

Question 102

AT: “A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace”

Answer 102

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.

Question 103

AT: “How soon succeeding eyes begin to look not read.”

Answer 103

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

Question 104

AT: “Litter of birdcalls strewed the same/bone riddled ground.”

Answer 104

darkly comic image of graveyard, presents the narrow thin boundary between life (bird calls) and death.

Question 105

AT: “The endless altered people came/ washing at their identity.”

Answer 105

- 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

Question 106

AT: " “helpless in the hollow of an unamorial age.”

Answer 106

A world that no longer knows anything about the history behind the monument and no longer connects with the values of

Question 107

AT: “Above the scrap of history/only an attitude remains.”

Answer 107

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

Question 108

AT: Time has transfigured them into/untruth.The Stone Fidelity.”

Answer 108

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

Question 109

AT: "“To prove our almost instinct, almost true,/What will survive of us is love.”

Answer 109

- 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?