Philip Larkin
A poem’s essence in a novel
Two characters in my work-in-progress (a YA sf/f/mystery/thriller thing) take a class together in which they have to write poetry. She’s pretty good at it, he not so much.
So poems are on my mind, and since I’m just over the 10,000-word mark in the work-in-progress, it means I’m taking a step back to evaluate my plotting and dream up new plot twists (if you were paying attention to my plotter vs. pantser post, you’d know this). Part of stepping back is looking at favorite things I’ve read and written. Since I used to teach British Literature, I have these two poems, two of my faves of all-time, saved on my computer.
Emily Bronte’s is a fairly straightforward poem of mourning. Philip Larkin’s captures, for me, the very profound feelings I’ve had visiting old, spiritual places here and abroad. Each poem has the essence of somethingBronte’s “divinest anguish” and Larkin’s “serious”nessthat, given their contexts, I feel in my own writing. If only I had a comparable gift with words, I might be published already.
Do you have a favorite poem that speaks to you so strongly you feel it echoes the essence of what you write? If you’re a reader, not a writer, do you have a favorite poem whose essence is something you find in the novels you gravitate toward?
If you’ve never thought about your favorite poem this way, maybe you should.
Either way, I’d love it if you shared your favorite poem. I’m always looking for new things to speak to me.
Remembrance
by Emily Bronte
Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my Only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Times all-wearing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore;
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers
From those brown hills have melted into spring-
Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive if I forget thee
While the Worlds tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong.
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me:
All my lifes bliss from thy dear life was given-
All my lifes bliss is in the grave with thee.
But when the days of golden dreams had perished
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened and fed without the aid of joy;
Then did I check the tears of useless passion,
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine!
And even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in Memorys rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
Church Going
by Philip Larkin
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.