MCMXIV

The poem records some of the post world war impression from Larkin’s point of view and its effect on the urban and rural life of England. In post world war around 8.5 million men died. It is a symbolic poem on the degeneration of England’s urban and rural life.
Larkin says
‘Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park’
Means to say that the long uneven lines are of old people are stretched as they are standing outside oval or Villa Park
And comments
‘The sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark’
The sun is shinning on historical smiling faces and the smile on faces express august bank holiday
Larkin symbolized the emptiness of towns with no men and says
‘And dark-clothed children at play’
Dark color symbolizes death, what Larkin means to say that even the children are mourning
Moving to country side he says
‘The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Doomsday lines
Under wheat's restless silence’
Here he has symbolized the division of land line with doomsday lines under wheat’s restless silence, and symbolized 6the pathetic condition that
‘The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses’
And in the end Larkin says that this is a matchless simplicity that thousands of men left their home knowing they wouldn’t be coming back. one cannot imagine such kind of simplicity
‘Never such innocence,
Never before or since’

The final line of this poem; 'never such innocence again' refects the pre-war victorian society's romantic views towards death. Before the war young men were encouraged to think of fighting as heroic, reminiscent of greek myths and fairytales. They had no idea about the suffering and trauma that would actually occur. In public schools at the time boys were taught about being 'a good sport' and doing glorious things for your country. I think this is what Larkin is referring to when he says the men were waiting as if outside 'the Oval or Villa Park'. No past experience can actually prepare then for the war but to them it must have seemed like a team effort, trying to win a victory for England as one might in cricket or football. This idea also highlights their innocence and makes this poem very poignant.
the 'moment in time' style of this poem captures how never after such terrible suffering will men be so keen or so unaware as they were in 1914. Larkin leaves this as open-ended. Is this innocence good or bad? it is up to the reader to decide.

I've got to admit, I actually despised both this poem and Phillip Larkin when I studied this, but after 3 months of analysing it for a 3,000 word essay I realised just how clever he and this individual poem are. Larkin manages to say exactly what he means to say without trying to 'show off' or make his message any easier or harder to access than necessary. I've always preferred war poetry that was written at the time it happened as I believed only they were, I suppose worthy, of writing about such an event. However, Larkin doesn't use the traditional aspect of a soldier's point of view, and instead opts for an account of what he knows about the time for the people left at home. I have to admire him for this as he doesn't pretend or claim to know the harsh reality of a soldier's life, yet somehow his description of the country left behind by the soldiers is just as shocking as the some of the poems about the harsh brutality of war. He creates an image of a country holding it's breath, frozen in time just waiting for a result; 'The thousands of marriages,/Lasting a little while longer:' Yet at the same time, those left behind are shown to be still trudging along through the mundane, yet necessary, rituals of life. It shows the contrast of the reactions of man and nature. Nature is carrying on despite the absence of the soldiers, which is shown in the line 'The place names all hazed over/With flowering grasses, and fields'. Nature is almost reclaiming the man-made here, showing no sign of sadness or of waiting for the men to return. Yet the people are anxiously awaiting their arrival despite having to still attempt to continue what ever normal life possible, again shown through the marriages lasting a little while longer. He conveys the difficulty the families of the soldier's faced in accepting the probable loss of any normality they had in the line 'Never such innocence again.' It's such a simplistic sentence, and yet the complex ideas and emotions it draws up are astounding. It's a very effective and prominent ending to such an incredible poem, yet is also such a true prediction made by Larkin. As you can see I no longer despise this poem... =] I actually had to cut down my essay from approx 7,000 words due to the many different readings and ideas presented in this poem. If anyone has any questions about it or wants another view on a reading, don't hesitate to contact me. I won't be giving out the full essay though... =] Also, thanks to many people who commented, your ideas helped a lot when I was studying different readings of this poem =]