Negative Indicative
Philip Larkin 1922 (Coventry) – 1985 (Hull)
Never to walk from the station's lamps and laurels
Carrying my father's lean old leather case
Crumbling like the register at the hotel;
Never to be shown upstairs
To a plain room smelling of soap, a towel
Neatly hung on the back of a rush chair,
The floor uneven, the grate choked with a frill,
Muslin curtains hiding the market square;
Never to visit the lame girl who lives three doors
Down Meeting-House Lane — 'This pile is ready; these
I shall finish tonight, with luck' — to watch, as she pours
Tea from a gold-lined jubilee pot, her eyes,
Her intelligent face; never, walking away
As light fails, to notice the first star
Pulsing alone in a long shell-coloured sky,
And remember the year has turned, and feel the air
Alive with the emblematic sound of water —
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Submitted by RobertHaigh on June 26, 2020
Modified on April 07, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 103 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXXX XAXA BXBX XXXA X |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 756 |
Words | 139 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
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"Negative Indicative" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/53834/negative-indicative>.
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