The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

There is a resilience, though in those cobbles and stones and weeds that just get on with life, whether ‘hunting pig’ or ‘holding a garden-party’ is really neither here nor there. Realising that life is made meaningless by death – that there is ‘Nothing to be said’ that can protect us from that uncomfortable fact – may be a good thing or it may not.

As frequently in this collection, the end of the poem divides humanity into two groups: the unconscious and ignorant set against the aware and intelligent. In this sense Nothing to be Said has a link to Mr Bleaney , in that Bleaney would slot easily into the ‘ignorant’ camp, whereas the speaker is clearly ‘aware.’ There is a degree of snobbery about this division of humanity, but this is offset by the poem’s sense that not being acutely aware of the meaninglessness of life may well be a more comfortable way of existing. If life is ‘slow dying,’ then ‘ Ways of slow dying’ (italics added) cannot be without benefit, and ‘ways/Of building, benediction’ and other acts of life have an irreducible value in providing us with a way of living. Better to be ‘vague as weed’ perhaps than to have ‘Nothing’ to say.

Love Songs in Age

This poem builds on a simple contrast between youthful optimism – the ‘spring-woken...freshness’ – and the ravages of time. Oddly for Larkin, this ‘freshness’ is the most powerful agent in the poem: the love songs retain their potency despite the damage done to their covers, and the old tree that represents the widow can still be ‘woken’ by the spring: its ‘freshness’ hidden, but still recoverable. Much of the past is regained – literally ‘Relearn[ed]’ as she apparently practises the songs again. Indeed, perhaps too much of the past is regained. The ‘unfailing sense of being young/.../That certainty of time laid up in store’ is now an illusion for a much older woman.

Moreover, the final stanza makes it clear that ‘love’ (as opposed to the youth celebrated in stanza two) was an illusion for the woman, even in the past. It is described in terms of unfulfilled promise – ‘Its bright incipience sailing above’ – the joys of its opening weeks or months seeming to be almost immediately out of reach (the unusual word ‘incipience’ meaning ‘something beginning’). The word ‘glare’ rather implies being blinded. Love promised (and still promises) ‘to solve, and satisfy,/And set unchangeably in order,’ but the woman is forced to admit, ‘It had not done so then, and could not now.’ The idea of love solving, satisfying and creating an immutable order is interesting as it suggests the kind of answers Larkin’s characters often seem to look for. Life is frequently seen as a problem to be solved .