Things to Think About
• What’s the difference being atheism and agnosticism?
• What’s the difference between religion and spiritualism?
• What place does organised religion have in today’s society?
• How has that changed in the last 30-50 years and why?
• Do we live in a secular society?
Church Going
Philip Larkin
Larkin 1922-85.
"Church Going" is one of his best-known, most admired poems. It first appeared in an
anthology called New Lines (1956). Larkin and his contemporaries put the collection
together. Together, they were known as the Movement, a group of poets who wanted to
make their work relevant and accessible to everyday readers. As a group of young English
writers they rejected the prevailing fashion for neo-Romantic writing in the style of Yeats and
Dylan Thomas. Larkin focused on intense personal emotion but strictly avoided
sentimentality or self-pity.
Apart from his association with the Movement, Larkin is also often referred to as a "Postwar
poet," meaning that his writing grapples with many of the big questions that people were
forced to ask after living through the death and destruction of World War II. How could
civilization be a good thing if it had led to such a terrible event? What higher purpose could
people still believe in when the world seemed so horrible? This widespread questioning
provided Larkin with a great opportunity to express his atheist beliefs and to ask really tough
questions of traditional religion.
He wasn't the first to do this, of course, and definitely won't be the last. But what makes
many of Larkin's poems (and especially "Church Going") so enduring is the way he's willing to
give religion its fair due, even as he criticises it.
Rhyme, Form and Meter
Despite the really conversational tone of the speaker, "Church Going" uses very a good deal of iambic
pentameter and a regular rhyme scheme.There are five repeated pairs of syllables. Each pair begins with
an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. Reading this poem out loud should produce the
following rhythm for each line: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM.
The poem (generally) follows the regular rhyme scheme of ABABCADCD. In this poem of nine-line
stanzas, in each stanza the last word of lines 1,3 and 6 rhyme (A), the last words of lines 2 and 4 rhyme
(B), the last words of lines 5 and 8 rhyme (C) and the last words of line 7 and 9 rhyme (D).
HOWEVER on occasion Larkin plays with the formal iambic pentameter and rhyme. The speaker is
appreciating the role of religion and the purpose it serves. By that token, the formal use of iambic
pentameter seems appropriate to that solemn focus of the poem. BUT he’s never 100% convinced. He
steps outside religion in order to critique it as a kind of superstition. FORM REFLECTS CONTENT.
He also refuses to commit entirely to a solid, perfect end rhyme throughout (there are slants or near
rhymes). He hesitates at points, which is totally in keeping with the hesitant approach that the speaker
takes toward religion. This refusal to commit entirely to a rigid rhythm and rhyme goes a long way as
well toward creating a really conversational tone in the poem.
The organized form and meter of the poem represents the church, and the casual tone represents the
speaker.
Introduction to the first person
speaker
He’s clearly not comfortable being
there if any formal religious activity is
taking place.
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the hold end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
‘thud’ –
onomatopoeia –
dull, lifeless sound
associated with
speaker’s view of
the church.
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
Spondee – A foot. A
stressed syllable followed
by another stressed
syllable.
‘thud shut’ – a spondee to emphasis the
sound of the door closing. Adds to the
creepy atmosphere the reader feels inside.
Ignorant/
indifferent to
supposed
sacred objects.
Nothing is
meaningless,
He does
however,
realise they
should be.
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats and stone,
Suggests all
churches are
the
same/contain
the same
‘stuff’
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now;
some brass and stuff
Up at the hold end; the small neat organ;
‘musty’ –
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
outdated and
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
boring.
BUT silence is
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
‘unignorable’
FIRST hint of
the conflicting
The hard enjambment of ‘cut’ linked
emotions felt
with word choice such as ‘brownish’
by the speaker.
emphasis the sense of decay and
harshness the speaker associates with
the church.
‘Sprawlings’ – robs
the church of any
order/discipline it is
suppose to have.
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now;
some brass and stuff
Up at the hold end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long.
Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
Humorous note. Duality of meaning. Growing belief in
the importance of religion? OR mocking it – Empty,
ridiculous custom?
Metonymy – A technique when
something is referred to by using
something else that’s closely related
to it. E.g The church = religion itself
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –
The speaker is
more interested
in the everyday
rather than the
spiritual
significance
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Words
connected
to aging
and the
end. The
speaker’s
mindset is
firmly that
the end of
organised
religion is
near.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring Large-scale verses,
and pronounce
‘Here endeth’much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an
Irish sixpence,
Mirrors the
central idea of
the poem.
Someone knows
the significance
of religion, but
not him.
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
A worthless currency for
something he believes worthless
(organised religion)
A change in tone between the 2nd and 3rd stanza. Atheism
to Agnosticism.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end up much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
What will become of the buildings when/if
churches fall completely out of favour:
- Museums?
- Desolate/ramshackle barn?
A reversal of the
end of the
previous stanza.
He can’t answer
the question
about the
significance of
religion, but he’s
beginning to
consider the
possibility that
that doesn’t
mean it is not
significant.
All that
remains will
be the
natural world.
There will be
no sense of
higher
purpose.
Whatever
that might
be.
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
If the things the sceptics disbelieve disappear
e.g. religion and superstition disappear then the
disbelievers will disappear too.
Continues the
idea from the
previous stanza.
A look into the
future.
- Links religion
to superstition
- Church
becomes like the
abandoned
house in a horror
movie.
Dual meaning
of ‘shape’
1.The physical
shape of the
church
disappearing
2.The
shape/space
religion
occupies in
our mind
disappearing
A shape
less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who.
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
The speaker is
attempting to answer
the question of what
remains when
organised religion and
the church have
disappeared from
society.
This place for what is was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
OR Christmas addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Will they be like him? Dual reading. Silly and
superficial or someone who, although they
don’t understand the significance of churches,
understands there might be some significance.
All superficial
associations/links
with the church.
No one who
appreciates the
spiritual questions
that the church
tries to provide
answers for.
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
A future ‘him’
in a world
where religion
plays no part.
Still bored
and
uninformed in
the place,
which now
has no
purpose. This
also could be
read as
personal
reflection on
his current
musings.
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unsplit
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell?
For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
Duality of
‘ghostly’.
Something
dead or the
‘living’ holy
ghost.
Representative
of the central
question in the
poem. Is
religion dead or
alive?
Significant or
irrelevant?
‘tending’ – suggests caring and draws religious
importance to the place. ‘Suburbs’ – connotations of
lack of emotional connection/avoiding neighbours. The
fact that ‘scrub’ has to be fought through suggests worth
holding onto importance of building/what it represents
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell?
For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
Suggestion that the church can make sense of
death by giving significance to the end. BUT
again the AMBIGUITY. ‘Shell’ has connotations
of empty/lifeless, but this is juxtaposed with
‘special. The question mark signals the end of
the speaker’s ‘representative’s’ musings.
In a secular society
(where the church has no
significance) marriage
often ends in divorce and
births are not necessarily
in ‘traditional’ family units.
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unsplit
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell?
For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
After all his musings he comes back to the idea
that it holds no significance. ‘frowsty’ – musty,
‘barn’ – a space for storing animals etc,
‘accountred’ – furnished, but no significance to
the objects. It is just a space of him, BUT it
does make him happy.
The speaker in the poem is really torn. On
the one hand, he recognizes the
importance of the work done by religion.
But, on the other, he just can't bring himself
to buy into that work fully.
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
The church is
compared to a
place where all
human desires
and drives
blend together.
Religion for
the speaker is
not just a set
of rules or
customs it’s an
entire world
view, which
speaks to
every corner
of human life.
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to
If only that so many dead lie round.
As the final stanza
begins, the speaker
suggests that the
reason he keeps
coming back to the
church is because
it's so "serious."
This seems to be a
shift from the
earlier vision of
future churches as
haunted houses.
Superstition is not
something usually
taken seriously.
Duality of meaning:
1. Church not only recognises
human desires, but makes them
to the entire
grow seem
wise significant
in,
universe by dressing them up or
"robing" them "as destinies" It is
giving purpose and structure to
human experience.
2. Portrays this work as really
superficial, too. The church
"robe[s]" these feelings as
destinies, which suggests that
this is not truthfully what they are.
Still, the speaker
recognises that
A serious house on serious earth it is,
the church's
power to make
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
human life
meaningful will
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
always be an
important task.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Even though he's
wondering about
Since someone will forever be surprising
what this church
will look like
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
when all the
believers have
And gravitating with it to this ground,
gone, he
acknowledges
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, that the work of
the church in
giving meaning to
If only that so many dead lie round.
life will never
There will always be someone like the speaker who will feel a
completely go
"hunger in himself to be more serious" (60). It might not be
away.
everyone, but there will always be someone out there who looks
for a deeper, more serious purpose to life. And the speaker
recognises that religion can provide that.
This desire for
deeper meaning in
the universe, the
speaker
concludes, will
always make
someone
"gravitate" toward
the holy ground of
a church, even if
this ground is only
metaphorical, and
not a physical
place. The person
will come to this
place because he
will find out what
the church once
stood for, that it
was a "proper
place to grow wise
in" (62). But is
there anything
more to this claim
than just hearsay?
How do we know
the church is a
proper place to
grow wise in?
For the speaker, whether it's a superstition or
the church has to be respected for the
A serious house on serious earth not,
it
is,
impact it has had on human history. For
atheists, it's not as easy as saying, "Well for
thousands
of years, all of those people wasted
In whose blent air all our compulsions
meet,
their lives on religious superstition." Rather,
the poem in this moment suggests that, at the
Are recognized, and
robed asend
destinies.
of the day, people will always have a
desire for finding a higher purpose in their
And that much never can be obsolete,
lives—even if that can't be something that is
grasped with any degree of certainty. So, there
must be some significance to the fact that so
Since someone will forever be surprising
many people over the millennia have satisfied
this desire through religion.
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
To answer that, the speaker says that the church grounds are
meaningful because they're surrounded by dead people. He's
saying that, even if there's not literally a God out there, there is still
something to be said about this fact: for thousands of years,
people have gone to their graves in the presence of a church—in
other words, believing in God and heaven.
The Speaker
The speaker feels like church and faith might be declining in
the modern world, and he's curious about what will happen
to the church when the last of the believers are gone. While
he doesn't come to any great conclusions, he figures that
something of the church's influence will remain. He just
doesn't know what. As a whole, the speaker in this poem is
characterised by his tendency to ask questions. In fact, the
poem is almost all questions between line 23 and 52. He
doesn't seem to come up with many definitive answers, but
that doesn't stop him from asking them in the first place.
Setting
Throughout the poem, the speaker focuses very closely on his setting. The irony
and wit of the poem, however, comes from the fact that the speaker doesn't focus
on any of the things he's supposed to when he's inside the church. Instead, he
wonders about practical concerns like whether or not the roof's been cleaned or
restored.
Overall, the speaker's reactions to the setting of this poem (the church) symbolise
the major theme of this poem, which is the gap between a person who's
interested in religious faith and the deeper mystical meaning that only full-blown
believers are familiar with. Setting up this relationship between the speaker and
the setting shows us that the objects inside the church don't have any inherent
meaning, but just the meaning that we give to them. But it also shows that the
church does have a vague mystique that keeps the speaker coming back to
check out the insides of churches.
Ultimately, Larkin uses the tension between the speaker's ignorance of church
symbolism, and his grasp on the physical church itself, as a staging ground for
the tension between religious faith and secular skepticism. Eventually the
speaker lands somewhere in the middle, in a place of questioning.
Title
"Church Going" seems like a very simple and straightforward title, just as the
poem itself seems to be simple and straightforward. On the most literal level, it
refers to the way that regular "church goers" attend mass every week. For the
speaker of this poem, though, church going has a completely different set of
meanings, because he's not connected to the official teachings of Christianity.
Church going for him refers to the way that he continues to return to the church
even though he can't find anything in it that's believable. This double meaning of
"church going" helps to highlight the tension this poem explores between
traditional religious meaning and the speaker's personal relationship to the
church.
On another level, "Church Going" could refer to the fact that the speaker of this
poem spends much of his time wondering about what will happen to churches
once people's belief in religion has vanished from the Earth. In other words, the
title also hints at the possibility that the church might "go" away someday and
never come back.