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Comment 8 of 8, added on September 9th, 2005 at 8:57 AM.
Larkin starts his poem after making it sure that no ceremony was going on in the Church. It connotes that Larkin himself did not like ceremonies being performed in the Churches, perhaps due to people’s unconcerned attitude towards churches, otherwise he would not have said:
“Once I’m sure here’s nothing going on”.
When Larkin says “Another church”, in line number three, it denotes that he has visited all the churches and every church of the city is empty. Perhaps, he has found some mental tranquility in the present church that is why he made his mind to stay in the Church for some time as it was his habit.
There is a beautiful blend of similar and dissimilar objects in the poem. For example in stanza number four, line number 28 “after dark” and “dubious women” and in stanza number six, line number 48 “suburb” and “scrub” respectively. The ellipses, personification, humour, rhetorical questions, transferred epithets, synaesthetic imagery and irony combined make the poem a thing of beauty.
The last stanza brings about the final and absolute conclusion. “A serious house on serious earth it is” pays tribute to churches. Everything of this world may wipe out, even “superstition, like belief, must die” but the essential uniqueness of churches can never obsolete and out dated. This final stanza not only brings about the ultimate message but it also removes the ambiguity of the poem. In the poem the poet asked his readers “And what remains when disbelief has gone?”. When everything will be annihilated, the church shall renovate humanity.
Ata-ur-Rahim from Pakistan
Ata from Pakistan
Comment 7 of 8, added on September 2nd, 2005 at 11:51 AM.
I know they always say to separate the speaker from the poet, but I think it's safe to say that it's Larkin himself speaking through this poem. I think Larkin really was expressing his own conflict here, a conflict that seems to permeate his other works as well. He needed a spiritual aspect in his life but every attempt to satisfy it left him feeling empty; he reflected on the seeming futility of churches here, but realized in the end
"For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;"
that he WOULD he keep coming back, as would anyone who feels the same urges, and truly all people feel those urges. This is why Larkin makes me feel both satisfied and sad; he's fixated on the notion that we cannot find true satisfaction and happiness in life (or at least he couldn't, and I tend to gravitate to his sentiments) but that we will inevitably go on trying in spite of this knowledge.
Lara from United States
Comment 6 of 8, added on September 1st, 2005 at 8:04 AM.
Larkin never speaks against church.But he is an agnostic like Arnold speaks about the loss of faith in contemporary society.Arnold evidently lamented the low tide of the sea o faith but Larkin seems to be indifferent.He respects the institution of the church though his reverence is 'awkward'.
Aparna from India
Comment 5 of 8, added on June 20th, 2005 at 2:18 AM.
Church going is considered among the best poems of Larkin. this poem is full of satirist symbolism. This poem clearly reveals the social context of the timer in which this poem was written. It was a time of decline of churches as these churches were visited for special purpose or ceremonies only.
In the first stanza we can see the symbolism when Larkin writes
‘Hatless I took off
My cycle clips in awkward reverence’
Further more Larkin symbolizes the people who pray as they are doing some hectic and unwanted job and he writes,
‘Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large scale verses and pronounce
Here endth much more loudly than I’d meant’
Furthermore Larkin symbolizes the emptiness of churches and their disuse and rise a question that
‘When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into’
And describes his fear when he says
’Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?’
Continuing his thoughts he has symbolized illiteracy and superstitious when he comments
‘Or after dark will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone’
But he raises another question
‘But superstitious like belief must die
And what remains when disbelief has gone ‘
But Larkin has conveyed a message in the end that churches are important because religion play a grate role in a person’s life, because faith in religion lights us through the dark to deity and he says
‘A serious house on serious earth it is
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet’
raheel from Pakistan
Comment 4 of 8, added on April 27th, 2005 at 7:04 PM.
The speaker is drawn to a church by curiosity, questioning the purpose of religion. He is skeptic of religion in fulfilling man’s spiritual emptiness. He questions the relevance of rituals and symbols and questions the shady history of religion, though, ironically holding some private reverence for the presence of the ‘sacred’ monument. “Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips” This paradox is explained by the line: “A hunger in himself to be more serious”, man has a need, a calling for spirituality.
Noticing a lack of modern churchgoers, he deduces that the structure will be used for more economic and materialistic purposes: these are the new gods. Regardless of this fact, he values the church because of what it represented to the people of the past, because it was enough to fill their spiritual emptiness, he respects their memory. Thus, the people are more important that the church structure itself… the church now stands as
a depiction of a past spiritual people… he admires that.
Nicola from Trinidad and Tobago, Republic
Comment 3 of 8, added on April 8th, 2005 at 5:47 AM.
I'd disagree with the two other comments to date. I can't see how you can find a latent 'spiritual need' in a poem that is so splenetic about any form of spirituality. The poem ends on a note of emptiness. This can't really be interpretted as a vacuum left in the place where spirituality once was. More a bafflement as to why anyone ever took it seriously and a certainty that everyone will come to see to pointlessness of this superstition.
Paul Evans from United Kingdom
Comment 2 of 8, added on March 11th, 2005 at 10:50 PM.
Larkin has written this introspective work as a vehicle to explore his reasons for being so drawn to something he thought was useless. The end result is his own desired understanding. He has done well to express his innermost conflicts both in style and mood. The reader sees very clearly his intent because of this skill, which makes for rewarding reading. The poem takes some study, but upon doing so the reader is lieky to be moved to reflect upon a spiritual need in his/her own life.
Susan from United States
Comment 1 of 8, added on December 1st, 2004 at 1:55 AM.
The narrator begins as a disappointed cynical visitor to a church, but as the poem progresses he sees the value of the building in a wry, humorous way because he comes to the realization that many people have spent their lives having feelings and experiences here that for him could only be found in other important events in life (marriage, birth, death). He suggests that the future will never appreciate the church the way the past did, but relates it with a small sense of regret. Larkin’s grasp of the feelings of everyday people in the latter half of the 20th Century is evident here.
Ed from United States
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Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
Larkin starts his poem after making it sure that no ceremony was going on in the Church. It connotes that Larkin himself did not like ceremonies being performed in the Churches, perhaps due to people’s unconcerned attitude towards churches, otherwise he would not have said:
“Once I’m sure here’s nothing going on”.
When Larkin says “Another church”, in line number three, it denotes that he has visited all the churches and every church of the city is empty. Perhaps, he has found some mental tranquility in the present church that is why he made his mind to stay in the Church for some time as it was his habit.
There is a beautiful blend of similar and dissimilar objects in the poem. For example in stanza number four, line number 28 “after dark” and “dubious women” and in stanza number six, line number 48 “suburb” and “scrub” respectively. The ellipses, personification, humour, rhetorical questions, transferred epithets, synaesthetic imagery and irony combined make the poem a thing of beauty.
The last stanza brings about the final and absolute conclusion. “A serious house on serious earth it is” pays tribute to churches. Everything of this world may wipe out, even “superstition, like belief, must die” but the essential uniqueness of churches can never obsolete and out dated. This final stanza not only brings about the ultimate message but it also removes the ambiguity of the poem. In the poem the poet asked his readers “And what remains when disbelief has gone?”. When everything will be annihilated, the church shall renovate humanity.
Ata-ur-Rahim from Pakistan
Ata from Pakistan