The poem
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped in the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft.
And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.
When I initially read this poem, I thought of how as we grow older, we all are to leave a place we once called home. When we return, things aren't exactly as they were when we left them. Although, everything can remain the same just as it was left, its we who change, and because we change, things don't feel the same upon return.
I took a second look at it, and thought about how maybe the content of the poem is about how when people are forced to leave homes, and the contents are just left there without the people.
my name is sara lopera,and i was introuced with the poem by my brother steven .Im only 13 years old but i think the poem is about how a guy feel so lonely that he feel that his house is his only campanion.He also mentions materialistic stuff as if that is all he has.
This is a beautiful poem; apart from the variety of nostalgic and melancholic themes, the wide use of literary techniques considering the short length of the poem is quite genius in places and thoroughly effective. The transferred epithets, the syntax, the subtle pun... they all comprise a fantastic poem. That final descending tricolon is also particularly poignant and provides, in my opinion, a perfectly apt conclusion for the tone and mood of the poem.
In my opinion, i wouldn't agree with any of those comments. I thought that Philip Larkin was personifying "home", and that home represents something in his life. It isn't taken literally as a house, as a home is more personal, more unique and individual than a house. A house is just merely a building, with no memories or experiences itself. It is a home that makes the poem different. The items Larkin names are images that give us a sense of "home". It is what he personally selected, and each have a special meaning, representation. I'm still hazy on the meaning of the poem, but i will further analyse it.
I definitely think Akira was onto something. I believe the poem is about a home being left, but since the personal belongings there were what made it a home, it becomes a house to the newcommers, ready to be turned into a home yet again, but with the things that are important to them. It is all about a cycle of life, and how possibly it is our belongings that make us who we are (look at Mr Bleany too, for instance) and are all we leave behind - yet the onlookers dont see the true significance in the items.
Interesting how everyone sees the poem differently! You can project your own meanings on it, so here's mine. I would suggest that this is the family home after the children have grown and left, and the parents are left with each other. The marriage had slowly faded away as the focus was the children, and now they are grown and gone, there's nothing left of the 'home' that was there. Just the material objects that…
Read the whole commentInteresting how everyone sees the poem differently! You can project your own meanings on it, so here's mine.
I would suggest that this is the family home after the children have grown and left, and the parents are left with each other. The marriage had slowly faded away as the focus was the children, and now they are grown and gone, there's nothing left of the 'home' that was there. Just the material objects that one decorated the home, but now symbolize the shell of the home, which is now gone.
The marriage started as a "joyous shot at how things ought to be", but the shot fell wide long ago. There's no-one left to please with the children gone, and as there's no direction to go, things sort of stay unchanged from when the last one left. There's no heart in it any more.
With the marriage withered and gone and the children away, there is no longer a home, just the shell. All too common, and closer to tragic than just sad.
BTW, I think the full stop / period at the end of the first stanza should be removed, as it is not there in other versions of the poem I have seen, and the flow of the poem really needs to go straight from "theft" to "And".
This poem
I like this poem and i cannot lie.
I feel sad now, sugarplum.