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Philip Larkin - First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Added: on June 9th, 2006 at 3:33 AM | Viewed: 5528 times | Comments (2)


First Sight - Comments and Information

Poet: Philip Larkin
Poem: First Sight
Volume: The Whitsun Weddings
Year: Published/Written in 1956
Poem of the Day on:
Aug 31 2005

Comment 2 of 2, added on December 12th, 2008 at 6:57 PM.

Why do people often feel the need to find a "message" in works of literature? Rarely ever is it appropriate to read a far-reaching allegory of human nature in these things. The poem is fourteen lines. It's a gentle, subtle thing, and part of the beauty is in that subtlety!

maybe i'm just a critic from United States
Comment 1 of 2, added on June 9th, 2006 at 3:33 AM.

This line; ‘Earth’s immeasurable surprise’ illustrates Larkin’s view that life never pans out as you might expect and that it is amazing and unpredictable. It is more obviously positive than many of his other works and seems to me to express a joy for the world without there needing to be any greater meaning such as a presence of a god or faith of some kind. It is praising the harshness and tenderness of nature, and life in its simplest form.

Abel from United Kingdom

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