Hey
I have to write an commentary about this poem for tomorrow and i really need help!!! so if you have or know anything related to this poem ! i'd be happy if you let let me know!!!
bye kim

'Next, Please'

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,
Sparking armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinkled,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.
-Philip Larkin



Stephen

[www.angelfire.com]



Stephen

Well, if you hadn't dawdled so long, you might try this:

[www.philiplarkin.com]

Since that option is likely unavailable now, let's take a look at the rascal:


Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.


Some comments from another site:

[plagiarist.com]

I confess I gawked at his 'golden tits', (figurehead on a ship) but surely it is safe to say it is an extended metaphor (look it up) comparing the sparkling armada of promises to our journey through life. Only one ship awaits us all at the end: Charon's ferry that takes us across the river Styx (remember to bring two coins to pay the ferryman).

The rhymes are aabbcc ... The meter is basically iambic pentameter, with the last line in each stanza curtailed (much like sapphics, but I am not sure if there is a standard form as such).

Looks like we cross posted, Stephen. Good link - much more thorough than my weak efforts.

Black sails to me say Theseus' return, his father looking to see if he is safe and he forgot to change to sails. So his father throws himself off the cliff in despair at the supposed death of his son.

'sparkling' does make more sense than 'sparking'!

No reference to Theseus (or his father) intended in this poem, surely. Black sails in the last stanza because black is traditionally associated (at least in the culture in which Larkin was writing) with death and funerals.

The whole poem springs from the cliche metaphor 'when your ship comes in', meaning when you come into the fortune you have been working or waiting for. Which I guess goes back to the time when a ship returning with a cargo of spice from the Indies made the fortunes of those who had invested in the voyage.

Its plainest proposition is that our hopes of such fortunes, however vivid and detailed, are invariably disappointed, and that the only thing certain to arrive is death. It's tempting therefore to liken the poem to the ships it describes: looks fancy, but ends up delivering nothing but a load of negativity.

There's more to it than that, I think. It's also a 'carpe diem' parable. At the outset Larkin declares as his target people who have developed the bad habit of allowing hope to supplant action ('bad habits of expectancy'). We have all probably done this at one time or another! Some of the descriptions of ships can be understood as projections. How much time such people waste, waiting idly for some hope to be fulfilled, lulled into putting things off 'till then'. The obvious pessimism of the poem is thus tempered with an implicit message not to rest on unrealistic hopes, but to 'make haste' and get on with constructive self-help while we have life to do so.

Ian



Post Edited (10-13-04 09:27)

That 'message' in this Larkin poem reminds me of the first two lines of a poem attributed to one Priscilla Leonard:

If you want to be happy, begin where you are.
Don't wait for some rapture that's future and far.

(Btw, PL would have been well advised to stop there. The rest of her poem is overdressed.)