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i read george herbert’s poem Miserie recently and turned back to it after that post, to see whether there was any useful gloss for Larkin’s use. Not really, tho it is really good:
Man is but grass
He knows it, fill the glasse
and
Oh foolish man! where are thine eyes?
How hast thou lost them in a crowd of cares?Thou pull’st the rug, and wilt not rise,
No not to purchase the whole pack of starres
(pull’st the rug = drag the quilt over yourself in the morning)
it was in the poem above tho - Decay - that i found a sort of parallel to This Be The Verse:
I see the world grows old, when as the heat
Of thy great love once spread, as in an urn
Doth closet up it self, and still retreat,
Cold sinne still forcing it...
i’ll break off there for the moment. this is, as with larkin’s coastal shelf, progressive, irrevocable loss, coldness and decay. it progresses through history, in herbert’s case away from the starting fire of God’s love, in Larkin’s through an accumulation of corruption (from an implied point of innocence, then).
what larkin cannot have is millenarian redemption - to continue the herbert verse:
Cold sinne still forcing it, till it return,
And calling Justice, all things burn.
the apocalyptic fire renews the heat forever. for larkin there is no such moment.
what larkin calls “misery” herbert wd call sin. and it occurs to me in a way that is now obvious and will have been pointed out before that much of what larkin wrote is a reaching into godlessness from with a religious framework, of poetry, of language and of society and an inherited state of mind. there is no wheel or couplet or fire to redeem his coastal shelf.
that inherited state of mind, from which you can’t escape, which traps you in its religion even when you do not believe, is how your parents and your parents’ generation fuck you up.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 14 December 2017 10:30 (six years ago) link
i think that happy conjunction of meaning, fit and sound is why it’s good! deepens like a coastal shelf works as a stand-alone image for me ymmv / de gustibus
― Fizzles, Thursday, 14 December 2017 10:32 (six years ago) link
Strong showing for the last verse, 4 of the top 5.
Also I have much love for some parents, but lol at the other line in the top five being "but not me, right, guys?"
― Andrew Farrell, Friday, 15 December 2017 08:34 (six years ago) link
Think the votes for "They may not mean to, but they do." was based on double-meaning, as discussed upthread
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 15 December 2017 11:30 (six years ago) link
The Verse This Be
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Man hands on misery to man.
They may not mean to, but they do.
Get out as early as you can,
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
Who half the time were soppy-stern
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
But they were fucked up in their turn
And add some extra, just for you.
They fill you with the faults they had
And half at one another’s throats.
― infinity (∞), Friday, 15 December 2017 17:40 (six years ago) link