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Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: Roslyn Barton (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: August 09, 2021 11:00PM

What is the central purpose?


~Roslyn~

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: lg (---.trlck.ca.charter.com)
Date: August 09, 2021 11:29PM

Could you post the poem so we know what you're talking about?

Les

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: Roslyn Barton (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: August 09, 2021 11:38PM

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

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: lg (---.trlck.ca.charter.com)
Date: August 10, 2021 12:03AM

There is some information here:

[www.sogang.ac.kr]

Les

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: StephenFryer (---.l5.c5.dsl.pol.co.uk)
Date: August 10, 2021 01:23AM

And there's his Society, which has a lively forum: you could post a question there.
[www.philiplarkin.com]



Stephen

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: lg (---.trlck.ca.charter.com)
Date: August 10, 2021 02:37AM

Thank you for the link, Stephen. A search of the site brings this page forward:

[tinyurl.com]

Les

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: StephenFryer (---.l5.c5.dsl.pol.co.uk)
Date: August 10, 2021 09:26AM

Fascinating stuff on Radio 4 this morning, anout some newly discovered poems of his -

[www.bbc.co.uk]



Stephen

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: Pam Adams (---.bus.csupomona.edu)
Date: August 10, 2021 10:46AM

You might get your teacher to define 'central purpose.' It seems a rather odd way of looking at a poem. (Perhaps he or she is trying to avoid the word 'theme'?)

Larkin is saying that people are falling away from religion.

pam

Re: Church Going by Philip Larkin
Posted by: Hugh Clary (---.denver-03rh15rt.co.dial-access.att.net)
Date: August 10, 2021 11:10AM

I could not get the tinyurl link to load, Les. Whenever I see this one by Larkin, I can't help remembering Hannibal Lecter's line, "I collect church collapses, recreationally."



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