Philip Larkin Poems

Vocabulary flashcards featuring key poem titles, lines, and metaphors from Philip Larkin's works shown in the lecture image.

The Trees

A poem by Philip Larkin about nature, renewal, and mortality, beginning with 'The trees are coming into leaf' and ending with 'Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.'

Days

A poem by Philip Larkin that asks 'What are days for?' and ends with the image of 'the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields.'

Talking in Bed

A poem by Philip Larkin exploring the quiet difficulty of intimacy, concluding with the effort to find 'Words at once true and kind / Or not untrue and not unkind.'

Greenness is a kind of grief

A line from Philip Larkin's poem 'The Trees' reflecting on the emergence of recent buds and new leaves.

Rings of grain

The structural detail in 'The Trees' that records the passage of time, showing that trees do not live forever but die too.

Unresting castles

A metaphor in 'The Trees' describing the full-grown thickness of trees as they thresh every May.

Priest and the doctor

The two figures in long coats featured in 'Days' who come running over fields when the question of what days are for is addressed.

Incomplete unrest

A phrase from 'Talking in Bed' describing the outside wind that builds and disperses clouds about the sky.

Unique distance from isolation

A phrase from Philip Larkin's 'Talking in Bed' describing the state of lying together with another person, where silence can still separate them.

Philip Larkin Collected Poems

A major collection title of Philip Larkin's poetic works.

The Whitsun Weddings

A well-known poem title by Philip Larkin shown among the featured search topics.