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Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin

Water

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
 
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
 
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
 
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

#English #XXCentury

Analysis
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The School in August

The cloakroom pegs are empty now, And locked the classroom door, The hollow desks are lined with du… And slow across the floor A sunbeam creeps between the chair…
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Room in Brooklyn, by Edward Hopper
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Home is so sad. It stays as it wa… Shaped in the comfort of the last… As if to win them back. Instead,… Of anyone to please, it withers so… Having no heart to put aside the t…
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Woman at a Window, by Caspar David Friedrich
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When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she… Taking pills or wearing a diaphrag… I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all th…
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Peasant family at the table, by Jozef Israëls
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They fuck you up, your mum and dad… They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they… And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their t…
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The Sunday Sessions: MCMXIV (1914)

Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun
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Caught in the center of a soundles… While hot inexplicable hours go by What trap is this? Where were its… You seem to ask. I make a sharp reply,
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Tightly-folded bud, I have wished you something None of the others would: Not the usual stuff About being beautiful,
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With the Door Open, by Tomás Sánchez
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I thought it would last my time— The sense that, beyond the town, There would always be fields and f… Where the village louts could clim… Such trees as were not cut down;
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The Whitsun Weddings

That Whitsun, I was late getting… Not till about One—twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three—quarters—empty train… All windows down, all cushions hot…
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To step over the low wall that div… Road from concrete walk above the… Brings sharply back something know… The miniature gaiety of seasides. Everything crowds under the low ho…
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To put one brick upon another, Add a third and then a forth, Leaves no time to wonder whether What you do has any worth. But to sit with bricks around you
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