The Whitsun Wedding - (Whitsun = time of spiritual rebirth ) Inspired by a journey Larkin took from Hull to London on a Whit Saturday A journey poem, in which a solitary traveller observes wedding parties on station platforms, seeing off newlywed couples as they head to London for their honeymoon. Gathers emotional momentum as train progresses impactful experience for Larkin "transcription of a very happy afternoon" The poem moves from description to meditation "Every time you stopped fresh emotion climbed aboard" Larkin Most of poem speaker = detached observer First 5 stanzas, speaker amused to point of disdain "in parodies of fashion, heels and veils, all posed irresolutely, watching us go" As poem moves on begins to consider the significance of the marriages, tone becomes elevated and hopeful. Length - one of Larkins longest poems, captures both the journey and the movement and the development of his responses to what he observes Poem has a leisurely, colloquial feel. First two stanzas evoke the towns and the country side through which the train passes. Stanza 3-7 focus shifts to wedding parties, persona is dismissive at the people he observes, sneering, "mothers are loud and fat;/ An uncle shouting smut" - contempt at clothes and places weddings were celebrated, "the nylon gloves and jewellery substitutes" - social prejudice? Just as reader may feel alienated by this social critique, tones changed - "happy funeral" "religious wounding" Pivotal moment is in S6 when speaker moves from observer to participant , sharing in the honeymoon journey "free at last.. we hurried towards London" we The frail coincidence of travelling on the same train is worked by the poet into something more substantial - something full of possibility  "the last confetti and advice were thrown" zeugma - one verb for two nouns severance from family insider's knowledge with an outsider's detachment - Larkin does not allowed itself such excited identification with his fellow human beings in any other poem. in the elevation of the final stanza, the persona is carried along by the same force of energy which carries the couples towards their futures. the detached "I" of the early stanzas is now fathered into the communal "we" importance of travel to poets each couple is caught up with their own experience, needs the detached observer to bring them all together. fleeting moments

MCMXVI a self aware evocation of England on the eve of WW1 poet looking at a photo of british men queuing to enlist in the army. - patient and relaxed - utterly innocent of the terrible war before them, not realise their world is about to be ravaged by years of battle - "Never before or since" has a society approached war and potential catastrophic change in such innocence and "without a word spoken" S2 - poet evokes england as it was in early part of 20th century S3 Reference social divide  poem evokes a vanished ideal the imminence of death causes the poet to refrain from any ironic statement about those who are going to die in the contemporary world it is impossible to envisage lines of young men queuing so eagerly and patiently to enlist to fight in a manner as if it were "all/An August Bank Holiday lark" - there will never be such innocence again the men are "grinning" a description which has darker undertones, calling to mind skeletal images of the dead mythic England - town on holiday, pubs "wide open all day" countryside emptied of men who stand in the lines, with no way of foreseeing that the war would drag on with unimaginable loss of life. Larkin's intellectual honesty is evident in the reference to social divisions in the final three lines of stanza 3 - "The differently-dressed servants with tiny rooms in huge houses, the dust behind limousines.." - L seems to question the mythic England that the poem itself proposes. final stanza - emotional appeal, sympathy in evoking the innocence of the men "leaving the gardens tidy' as they set out to war. expectation to be returning home. the domestic detail works more powerfully than any rhetorical denunciation of war. "The thousands of marriages/ lasting a little longer" "Never such innocence again" title - roman numerals - "I wanted to remind the reader of a date on a monument" - tombstones and war memorials. poem is written as one sentence without a main verb , impression of timelessness - divorced from historical change, a mythic world. lines run on in a lulling manner, movement of soc towards demise, use of soft sibilant sounds to create gentle atmosphere, heightens tragic fate, long vowels - grandeur of past. poem can be read as an ironic view of innocence, the irony made gentle by L respect for those who died in the war. Larkin's aim was to preserve that precariously poised moment of innocence. for this reason, the poem does not end with death and destruction  never again, after the horrors of the war that came, will people be so innocent about war again a changing world - snapshot of society on the brink of colossal upheaval. Britian on the cusp of WW1, the mens naivety startles the poet, treating pending war with such non-chalance "grinning as if it were all/ An august Bank Holiday Lark" - knew they were wealthy and powerful nation- over confident and invincible society idyllic and peaceful - too complacent - forgetful of past "domesday lines" hidden beneath wheat in the field - memories of such battles long forgotten pubs "wide open all day" almost regal sense of certainty as children are named after kings and queens and men wear "crowns of hats" countryside depicted as indifferent to affairs of man "countryside not caring"

Ambulances S1 - ambulances threading their way through the busy city, attract a lot of attention, secret private places, closed from outside world like confessional boxes "closed like confessional boxes" no where is safe from death and illness "they come to rest at any kerb/ all streets in time are visited" s2 - smell of cooking from houses brings to mind normal everyday existence. patient torn from this world places in terrifying ambulance where he may never return "past smells of different dinners" patient referred to as "it" detachment s3- onlookers struck with sense of their own mortality - "poor soul they whisper at their own distress" - pitying themselves, one day face the "solving emptiness of death" suggested that there is no life after death s4 poet imagines someone dying in back of ambulance "nearly at an end" inevitability of death, our lives "all we are" seems nothing more than a journey toward death, nearness of death - surrounds us, lying "under all we do" can strike suddenly personifies ambulance as messenger of death - ready at any moment to take us away. s5 likens our indv lives to tapestries, woven all our personal traits and experiences, each life a "random blend/ of families and fortunes" "at last begin to loosen" - death cuts us off from familiar world "sudden shut of loss" "far /from the exchange of love" discomfort - "permanent black and true" "poor soul/ they whisper at their own discomfort" ABCBCA rhyming scheme half rhymes "absorb/kerb" "room/come" simile - ambulance as a confessional box (line 1) soft s sounds to convey  sense of life slipping away life is governed "by the permanent and black and true fact of death" Larkin = "everything i write i think has the consciousness of approaching death in the background" despite the shared fate of death that awaits us all, poet is alert and terrified by the loneliness of death. structure, like a sonnet, first 3 stanzas presenting subject in concrete terms, final 2 consider deeper significance in a secular age the ambulance has the force of a religious symbol, it mediates between the world of the living and dead. "confessionals" brutality of death "wild white face that overtips/ red stretcher blankets"becomes the it of line 12 - a piece of cargo stowed and transported, children and women see the wild face as "it" the long perspective of death both enhances the values of precarious life and fatally undermines the possible significance of all that life can offer 

The Whit

MCMXVI

Ambulances