Note on this Essay
I would like to state that this essay is not to give an exhaustive analysis about the poems to be discussed but to examine them from a particular aspect. The reason for this is that Philip Larkin was one of the best known and most analyzed poets of the second half of the 20th century.
The scope of this TDK essay makes it possible to provide a comprehensive analysis of Philip Larkin's poems only from a selected aspect, in this case the religious content of his oeuvre.
Larkin's Relationship with Religion and Christianity
Philip Larkin was an atheist or, more precisely, an agnostic, even if he wrote in one of his letters that "I am (a) English (b) Protestant and (c) the owner of a large new-looking car just made to be stoned and tipped in the Liffey" (Motion 1993 392), and even Watson called him "homo religious" (358). He also said that he is neither religious nor does he write religious poems very often. E.g. "'Church Going' [ … ] is not religious at all" in a 'Conversation with Ian Hamilton' , and the topic "there is no God anymore" is recurring in his works, too.
I do not want to question his agnostic views. Neither do I want to question that in his poems he did not want to add religious features; although there are some poems of his that can be called "religious poems", as Terry Whalen called 'The Explosion' (59). I also do not question that he was tied to religion only because he stated the opposite in the BBC program 'How or Why I Write Poetry' . Maxwell has referred to some critics who said that Larkin did believe in God, while other critics claimed that he believed in nothing in life. Which of these claims is true depends on the "strength or originality of their views" (9) and I can agree

with this point. Philip Larkin was not a saint (according to Hamilton 3 ) - on the contrary, he had quite a "problematic" personality. However, in my essay I will omit his life and opinion as much as possible and only concentrate on his poems and the religious attitude that some of them reveal.
Working Process
A few of Larkin's poems deal with religion in general and many are deeply affected by Christianity in the traditional sense. The main reason for this might be that Larkin lived in a society that was fundamentally Christian, therefore his basic notions (especially on transcendence) are much affected by Christianity. This can be detected in many poems of his from the ones that contain Christian expressions such as "The apple unbitten in the palm" in 'As Bad as a Mile' or "The trumpet's voice" in 'Reasons for
Attendance' . In addition, the 'Dedicated' has a simile "That the walks be smooth / For the feet of the angel" as well as 'Solar', "Our needs hourly
/ Climb and return like angels." The word "Eden" is also used twice, in
'Plymouth' and 'Arrival'. There are also poems that use non-Christian vocabulary. In 'Breadfruit' the word "Mecca" is used (in a negative context) and in 'If, My Darling' the word "Sabbath" is used.
With this small (and certainly not complete) selection I wanted to emphasize that nobody can remove himself from his circumstances. Larkin lived in a society where Christianity still was an important factor in everyday life, from the landscapes with churches (as in 'Church Going') to the curses evoking God ("thanks, God" in 'Whatever Happened?').
This essay is about poems that are deeply affected by religion or
Christianity in many ways. In the first section, two poems will be discussed that are related to ancient religions; they are 'Water' and
'Solar', which can be paired, as we will see. The latter sections are about those poems that are associated with Christianity in some way. These poems are collected into four main groups, and will be discussed in separate sections of the essay.
The first group ('Christian Tradition in Larkin's Poems') consists of poems that capture a scene from Christian tradition (i.e. from the Bible) and transform it to our circumstances or our world. These are 'Livings
III', which is like the Last Supper, 'Faith Healing', which evokes Jesus healing people, and 'The Explosion', which is about a resurrection that is obviously like the Resurrection of Christ.

In the second group ('No God Anymore'), there are poems that claim that
God does not exist anymore, which might mean that He did exist in the past (these poems are 'High Windows', 'Vers de Société' and 'Fiction and the Reading Public').
The third group ('Poems from the Age where there Still Was a God') is closely connected to the second one, including poems that are set in a time when God did exist ('MCMXIV' and 'An Arundel Tomb').
The fourth group ('Poems about the Need to Believe') deals with poems about death and transcendence, 'The Building' and 'Ambulances', or about the need for a belief, like 'Church Going' and 'A Stone Church
Damaged by a Bomb'. As indicated, these poems constitute pairs; they are intimately related with respect to their religious image.
Before dealing with the Christianity-related poems, two important poems must be discussed first, since although they are not explicitly about
Christianity, they deal with religiousness in general. The analysis of these poems may reveal another aspect of Larkin's relationship to religion in general and Christianity itself too. Many critics have associated 'Water' and 'Solar' and the following is an interpretation to explain their connection.
'Water'
A few of Larkin's poems are closely associated with religiousness without being Christian. 'Water' is definitely of this kind; its main theme is to
"construct a religion". Although Heaney pointed out that almost anything could be chosen to represent a new religion (136), it is not accidental that water was chosen, since it is an element that can be associated with the ancient cultures as well as Christianity, especially baptism and rebirth
(Rossen 45). Kuby pointed out that all religions use water for some reason
(probably the fundamental quality of water is the reason for this). The only difference between Larkin's religion and a 'real' one (according to
Kuby) is that it has no real dogma except for the marveling and respect for water (143) as the element that our life is based on without attaching any special sanctity to it (Davie, 66). Still, the poem describes the dogmas of the religion he would construct, all explicit images of baptism e.g. "sousing". The first three stanzas describe one single movement found in every litany that makes the whole poem a description of this one

single image, the ancient custom of having a sacred wash (not only
Christianity has such a custom, but also Hindi religions). The themes used to describe his new religion are, nevertheless, based on Christianity, e.g. the image of the church.
The only exception is the last stanza: "And I should raise in the east / A glass of water / Where any-angled light / Would congregate endlessly."
The last word lends continuity to the religion as well as coherence and unity (Swarbrick 99) while also dealing with another theme: passing, death or transcendence. This last stanza is an image of another cult, the one of the Sun that gives light.
'Solar'
The image of the Sun leads to another poem closely connected to
'Water', that is 'Solar'. None of these poems deals with human values, which neatly fits Booth's theory of Larkin's religious poetry, i.e. that he had nothing to do with religion as such (166). The poem itself has the form of a psalm, and can be connected especially to Psalm 104 (An
Sonjae). Indeed it is a psalm to "one of the most universal deities of ancient religion" (Booth 166). The personified Sun-image correlates with
Akenaten's 'Hymn to the Sun', which also is appealingly similar to Psalm
104 (Hall). Both call the Sun their ancestor ("Into an origin"), their God, the endless deity ("You give for ever").
Since the connection between 'Hymn to the Sun' and 'Solar' has never been discussed as far as I am aware , I shall present a brief comparison of the two poems. The main symbols of the hymn are present in 'Solar' too, although it was not explored as briefly as in the primitive poem, which follows from its length.
In 'Solar' the Sun itself is described with such images as "Suspended lion face" or "petalled head of flames". In the 'Hymn to the Sun', both the lions and the plants are real. These two images of the 'Hymn to the Sun' can be contrasted, since the lions are opposed to the Sun coming out of their dens in the dark while the plants and trees "flourish [ … ] in adoration to" the Sun. From these examples, it can be seen that 'Solar' is more likely a description of the kind of Sun that is worshipped in the
'Hymn to the Sun'.
Another important notion that the two verses share is the thought of giving. Larkin's poem says that the Sun "give[s] for ever", while the

'Hymn to the Sun' has a full stanza on what the Sun gives to people on
Earth. It gives "life to the son in the body of his mother" and "breath to animate every one", which is the most important thing a man would want.
As to how long these gods give their gifts, it is forever, since each is considered a "Lord of eternity".
Both poems describe the Sun as something eternal, something beautiful.
However, while Larkin's Sun stands still, Akhenaton's is being active all through the poem. Larkin's poem is a description of an image of a Sun god while Akhenaton's is a description of the effects of an active god.
Larkin's exists while Akhenaton's produces things. This is the main difference between the two poems that makes Larkin's poem a parody of all adorations, in that it describes a god who does not do anything to his worshippers. This might be an opinion of the Christianity of Larkin's time, i.e. there is no need to believe in something that does not do anything but only exists.
Although it is edifying to compare two poems that worship the Sun, the main source that definitely affected 'Solar' is the Bible. According to An
Sonjae, not only the form connects the poem to the Bible but also the content, Genesis 28. This is Jacob's dream (Moses I, 28: 12-17), as the images "Climb and return like angels" in the poem correlate with the
Bible's Moses I, 28:12. Since the central figure of the poem is the Sun instead of God, this is "a parody of Christian devotional poetry, in that it personifies the sun in ways that Larkin otherwise always rejects" (An
Sonjae).
'Solar' is a parody not only because it personifies the sun drawing a picture of an almost physical force (King 30), since there were religions where Sun was the deity - e.g. the ancient Egyptian religion of
Akhenaton's, as was seen above. It can also be read as a "pathetic fallacy" as did Rossen (47) or Heaney (133) .
Moreover, in one reading it might be explained as God being the Sun itself, therefore Christians (or followers of any other religions) appreciate the Sun instead of the "real God". Even the Bible warns not to worship the Sun, e.g. Ezekiel 8:16-17 (Hall), therefore Larkin touched a real problem. This leads to an appreciation of a mammon that is a sin in
Christian tradition and this can be a basis for parody. This reading is based on the psalm form, and that the poem is alike a description of God with angels but giving the sun all God's powers ("You exist openly" or
"Unclosing like a hand", to give some examples). We also have to consider

that this is an attempt to convince others that to write an adoration to a deity has nothing to do with religious feelings but with a clear eye and a talent for making poetry.
Conclusion
In this aspect, 'Water' is also a parody of religion. The poem tries to show how easy it is to construct a religion, how natural it is to cherish anything and how unnecessary it is to have complex rules and liturgies to admire a deity. It is also a parody of the church, since here it does not have to be a cathedral, but "a fording". Interestingly these ideas are also reflected in the form of the poem, since it (as well as 'Solar', although in a less explicit way) is based on repetitions ("sousing [ … ] devout drench"), parallelisms ("Going to church / Would entail" and "My litany would employ") and alliteration (as "devout drench"). This is a poem about an uncomplicated religion, in which religion itself is nothing complex, on the contrary, it is the church that makes religion into something complex regardless of what it was originally. The message of both poems is that it is not religious feelings but irony that makes somebody write a religious poem.
The first group of poems I have identified consisted of those whose settings are based on Christian tradition, i.e. scenes from the New
Testament. They are 'Faith Healing', based on Jesus' healing acts, 'The
Explosion', based on the Resurrection, and 'Living III', based on the Last
Supper.
'Faith Healing'
Many parts of the Bible are about Jesus healing the ill-bodied or guilty.
To mention only two stories, the ones referred to in 'Faith Healing', about healing an eye and a knee: from Mark 10:46-52, Matthew 9:27-31,
Luke 18:35-43, John 9 (healing a blind); and Mark 2:1-12 Matthew 9:1-8,
Luke 5:17-26 (healing a cripple).
The poem itself is not identical to the biblical stories in any way, rather the situation is very much like the story about the cripple. The place where the healer works is crowded with ill people. What the healer actually does is to pray to God to heal. What comes after that is totally different from the biblical scene. The "deep American voice" does not

pray to show God's power but to show his own: to "direct [ … ] about this eye, that knee". The ill are not the same either: when healed they stay
"stiff, twitching and loud". This procedure, therefore, does not heal in the biblical sense, by healing the soul, so that the healed body is only a materialization of the purified soul, but vice versa, the body is healed but the soul is not. What follows from this is that the healer is not really healing but practicing quackery.
Janice Rossen pointed out that the sick are all women becoming perverse
(with the image of the mustache), while the healer is an American man, referring to Hollywood's show business (44 and 43). Both could have significance, since the former are viewed as fragile i.e. the ones who need more help and caring (as opposed to men, in the traditional sense). That the healer is American may have to do with the United States being one of the world's leading countries. At the same time, the USA, although powerful, is seen by most Europeans as artificial, and in this sense, an
American is the symbol of artificiality itself. This might be associated with the circumstances under which the poem was written, i.e. that it was based on a documentary Larkin saw, as he has stated it in a BBC interview
. The American healer truly is artificial as is the whole narrative of the poem. This aspect lends a new perspective to the reading since it is stated that nothing is to be taken seriously, everything is unreal.
In the first stanza the action of healing is described as tangibly as if it were a scene in a film - which it actually was inspired by. It describes the healer dressed just like an ordinary person, but someone who wants to be extraordinary on the inside. Still, his quackery makes one think that he is no less common than any other charlatan. He has the "voice of a lover, hand of a doctor, the words of a mother, and the approved power of
God"; to the women this symbolizes all their love-ideals in one person
(Kuby, 85).The following two stanzas analyze the emotional, spiritual side of the women. The "sheepish" ones go back to their normal life, but the others cannot feel the relief they came for and therefore dream of going back when they can be alone with their healer to be "lift[ed] and lighten[ed]". In these lines the womanly adult intellect and the childish na?ve faith merge into an absurd and impossible whole (Rácz, 111).
The third stanza offers the 'moral conclusion' that what all people need in life essentially is "a life lived according to love", and this love is the true connection to God. Kuby shows this when she writes, "All forms of love [ … ] taken together suggest disillusionment with an encompassing God or Divine love."(85) When recognizing that they did not get what they

were truly searching for they also realize that the "voice above" "all time has disproved" i.e. told them so. The final conclusion, therefore, is that no external healing helps if the mind and spirit are not healed. To love and to be loved is the conclusion of the poem as well as is the essential thesis of
Jesus (which is also the conclusion of 'Arundel Tomb' to be discussed below).
The poem can also be read ironically, i.e. that love is something that ordinary people cannot get in present-day society. The half line "That nothing cures" might suggest that love is not enough to help one to survive. On the contrary, the women are not loved at all. The "love for 20 seconds" (Rossen 43) can neither cure nor give real love. Only a few can understand the real meaning of love i.e. that it is "the difference they could make / By loving others" but this is the minority, the ones who can still believe in a secular world. To "most it sweeps / As all they might have done had they been loved." They do not know what love really is as they are not loved, which makes their lives tragic. In this reading, the conclusion is that although love could and should be essential to human life, it is forgotten and irrelevant in our alienated society. Morrison claims that the essential need for love is religion itself (223). This notion can be associated with 'Verse de Société' to be discussed below.
'The Explosion'
The resurrection theme is widely discussed in the Bible, since it is one of the most important scenes of the New Testament. We can find the story in all Gospels: John 19:1-23, Luke 24:1-35, Mark 16:1-8 and Matthew 28:1-
10.
Whalen claims that the poem is "a respect for Christianity dramatized as fulsome appreciation of its account of death and existential mystery"
(59). Not only the theme of resurrection makes us think that but also how it is presented in the poem. The resurrection of the miners is a miracle that refers to old Christianity without dogmas (Rácz, 181), they are religious figures in the sense that they make up a closed and conservative community entirely separated from the outer world. Also, it is a very
"unlarkinesque" poem; the poet said in 'Larkin at Fifty' that 'The
Explosion' is not like him, or how he would like to be.
'The Explosion' is written in the rhythm of Longfellow's Hiawatha, as many critics have stated , and although according to Motion, Larkin did not realize this (394), this form is very consciously, more to say,

forcefully applied to the whole poem. Although the poem has a strong rhythmic form, its triplets do not rhyme, which makes it a ballad of the miners (Swarbrick 149).
The poem starts out in a Lawrentian miners' village (Whalen 59, Rácz
181), and turns into a tragedy. The wives are religious (praying as "they /
Are sitting in God's house"), which may lead the reader to conclude that the husbands were equally devout. This might provide an answer to the miracle at the end. Resurrection is only possible if the participants are truly religious in the same way as, for example, with the Stigmas (i.e.: if somebody believes, miracles can happen to him or her). The description of an average day at the miners' colony is very calm, with the sun rising and the miners laughing while walking to the pit. This could be the rural ideal, where nobody is rich but everybody seems to be happy. The image that
"one chased after rabbits" makes the whole narrative livelier. Yet the images lead to the tragic outcome of the explosion with a Shakespearean dramaturgy (beginning with "on the day of the explosion").
The first half of the poem is a descriptive narrative, while the second half deals with the tragedy and rescue operations. The images can be associated to each other: the sun that was sleeping at the beginning is now on the zenith "scarved as in a heat-haze, dimmed". The "oath-edged talk" of the miners is earthly and everyday, while the prayer of the women is divine. The most beautiful image is in the last line, "one showing the eggs unbroken", that is associated with the third stanza ("Came back with a nest of lark's eggs; / Showed them; lodged them in the grasses").
These images outline the contrast between everyday life and the extraordinary event, which also leads to the dramaturgy mentioned above.
The sixth stanza of the poem is the central one, in which the wives speak or think their true belief. It is a belief that is able to lead to a miracle even "for a second", even in a wondrous way. There is no true resurrection in the sense that people return from death. It is a resurrection in the sense of seeing human ascension, a resurrection in the Biblical sense. It is important to point out that this poem does not present Larkin's point of view, but a completely different community's. The poetic self and the real Larkin are usually two different entities. A spectacular example is
'The Wedding Wind', where he talks with a bride's voice, and where the experience of the ascension might be either the acceptance of
Christianity or an ironic illusion, a vision of resurrection (Rácz 181).

The former concept could be based on the fact that this poem is the final one in Larkin's last volume, High Windows, and considering the way he compiled his volumes, 'The Wedding Wind' could well be a conclusion of his work. In fact, however, this poem was written nearly 16 years before his death, though he did not write much after writing 'The Explosion' (on the 5th of January, 1970 - he died on the 2nd of December, 1985). Seen in this light, the poem is not a conclusion but rather a moment in which the poet grasped the essence of Christianity -or else another example when he could treat his favored topic of being "less deceived", or here,
"more deceived".
This latter theory is based on the usual irony of his poems that can be detected many times. In an ironical reading, the poem is rather a description of a story that he might have heard, read or invented. In this sense, the story is only an excuse to write about the mustiness of religion in present day's society. The secular Larkin writes this poem who wants to prove that religion is nothing real, therefore miracles do not happen in the real world. Thus people who still think that they "saw men of the explosion // Larger than in life … " do not know real life but hide behind religion to forget about real problems. These people are the "more deceived" since they neither know and nor care about the real presentday world but invent another world. This is something that Larkin tried to avoid all his life (see 'Deceptions').
'Livings III'
The Last Supper is a pivotal scene of the New Testament (Matthew
26:17-29, Mark 14:12-25, Luke 22:7-23, John 13-17). Originally, the incident was about Jesus' last benediction of bread and wine, while He tells His disciples that one of them would betray Him.
The supper of the third poem of 'Livings' is probably set in 18th century
Cambridge, as many critics suggest. Jack Ketch (originally a hangman who butchered many innocent people) serves as a dating tool, since he was hanged in 1718, and the students were probably talking about him as a contemporary case. The surroundings, the cobbled streets, the "Chaldean constellations", as well as the vocabulary (words like "advowson", "snape", and "sizar"), also suggest that the setting is not contemporary.
In establishing the place of the poem, the word "sizar" is useful, since it is a term employed only at the colleges of Cambridge University and at
Trinity College, Dublin. Although Larkin was a librarian in Belfast until

1955, he wrote 'Livings' in 1971, and the gap in time makes the connection not very convincing. At the same time, Cambridge may be more ancient and prestigious and thus might be the place where the poem is set.
As noted, 'Livings III' is a reflection on the Last Supper. Rácz claims that the eighth line gives us a biblical alternative, but the first line
"Tonight we dine without the Master", can be read in a religious way: the
Master is Jesus himself, who first named bread His flesh and wine His blood. He thereby established the custom of the Holy Communion, the ceremony in which to remember Him by eating and drinking. To dine without Him means that we cannot remember Jesus, therefore
Christianity ceases to exist. This is one of Larkin's most important theses, namely that we live in a post-Christian era. This latter notion is why he makes the dinner so monotonous (Rácz, 151), when the discussion is about everyday things (e.g. "What the wood from Snape will fetch") , and only when they all get drunk does the poem reach an elevated mood:
"The wine heats temper and complexion: / Oath-enforced assertions fly /
On rheumy fevers, resurrection, / Regicide and rabbit pie."
The last two stanzas are more remarkable: the most important topics are discussed when the diners are drunk: health, religion, politics and food.
This image is ironical since the diners reach the level of a "standard" evening only when drunk, which is not a very convincing way to make the reader believe that these are their typical topics. On the contrary, these students are not able to have a conversation unless their master is with them or unless they get drunk. The most visible sign of this irony is that food has the same status as health, religion and politics. This is when the absence of the master can be seen when he does not control the minds of his disciples. This resembles the scene after the death of Jesus where his disciples could not deal with the situation for a long time, and retreated from the world. The loss of the reassuring belief in either
Christ or the self's knowledge was the main problem of the disciples and is a main theme of the poem.
Another relevant point in the poem from this essay's aspect is that religion was a central issue on the public's mind at the time when the poem is set. Thereby we can relate this poem to 'An Arundel Tomb' and
'MCMXIV' as a poem that is set in an age where religion and Christianity was pivotal. This is represented by the vocabulary of the poem, the poet's use of archaisms, as it was noted above. In addition, the iambic tetrameter form, although common in Larkin's oeuvre, also refers to the setting of the poem.

Conclusion
All these poems represent a scene from the Bible more or less explicitly.
There is a very important message in these settings, i.e. that religion imparts power to those who believe. In 'Faith Healing', those who find out that "All they might have done had they been loved" are the ones who finally become happy. In 'The Explosion', although the topic is very tragic, there is some calmness in the poem that is mainly based on the wives who find solace in religiousness. Part III from 'Livings' is an inversion of the former two poems, since it is about the absence of Christ and hence of a dull emptiness. Therefore is not only the setting that connects these poems but the message about Jesus: where He is, there is love, but where He is not, there is only a vacuum. This is not a very
Larkinesque point of view; the poet himself probably did not desire to add this religious aspect to his poems, still it is clearly there in these three poems.
Another aspect that all three poems share is the irony that can be detected, or the notion of Larkin's skepticism about religion and
Christianity. The three poems discuss love from different aspects. 'Faith
Healing' is about the tragedy of an unloving society, 'The Explosion' about how love (both marital and religious) can give hope and strength, and 'Livings III' about how the loss of the beloved master affects one's life. Since love is a very important theme of Christianity, these poems provide an interpretation of this religion too: the most important message of Christianity is to love but this is forgotten in a secular age. This point of view is ironic; therefore the ironic interpretations of these poems can also be associated with this notion.
The second group of poems I have identified contains the ones that either claim that God no longer exists therefore that He did exist, ('High
Windows', 'Vers de Société', 'Fiction and the Reading Public'), or about a time when God did exist ('MCMXIV', 'An Arundel Tomb').
'High Windows'
'High Windows' is a very widely known and discussed poem. I will therefore not discuss it in any depth; only try to assemble critical comments on its connection to religion or Christianity. These comments fall into two main categories, those who consider the poem totally

irreligious and having nothing to do with Christianity, and those who, in contrast, claim that the poem is really about Christianity.
In the context of this paper, the chief connection to the topic of religion is the very fact that Larkin's generation was the one that was able to do away with Christianity (Rácz, 155). It is important to note that it is not religion what they reject but the ecclesiastical system. "Sweating in the dark / About [ … ] / What you think of the priest," to my mind, these lines do not mean that religion as such has disappeared but that is no longer necessary to be Christian. In light of the last stanza it means exactly the opposite, i.e. that there is some kind of a religion somewhere, what has changed is that now it does not lie in the rules but only in personal decisions or, to use Larkin's words, the "endlessness".
Endlessness is an important notion in the poem, it can be found two times: once in the middle of the poem and then at the very end, (which position is actually very central in a poem). The two instances are related, the first refers to something that follows while the other to something preceding it, the first to the young, the second to the old. That can either mean the deceased in Heaven or the deceased as "nothing", gone without a trace. These opposites make endlessness a property that describes life as something continuous, even if there are changes
"endlessly". Continuousness does not mean constancy but ongoing change.
An important interpretation of this endlessness would be freedom, since this is what Larkin seems to strive for, even though it is impossible to reach it (since he is in a room). In other words, freedom is only an illusion because it is relative, as Swarbrick (136) suggests (the generation before
Larkin's had the freedom of belief, while the one after Larkin's had the freedom of sex).
There are different interpretations about the meaning of the last stanza.
Booth, who refuses to treat Larkin as a poet who has anything to do with
Christianity, says that the title refers to the poet's own windows, and the image of blue air is only a description of reality without any transcendental meaning (167). Rácz, for example, claims that the endless blue air does have an underlying meaning, that of eternal clarity (155).
Watson calls interprets this notion as "beyond the known and limited lies the unknown and unlimited" (355) i.e. the universal God. Lerner (30) ignores the meaning of the "high windows", still he calls the vision "openended" i.e. that the last image of the poem opens unto nothing therefore it ends with "a glimpse of absence and emptiness" (31-32). Walcott called

the last lines tender, prayerlike, sacred and translucent (39) with other poems as 'Water' or 'Coming'.
I am most likely to agree with Rácz for one important reason: The whole poem flows towards one main image, namely that although every generation becomes more and more independent, there still are some things within us that we cannot get rid of. Endlessness is one of these main images, and an endless blue sky is truly a Christian image. This is again an image that Larkin cannot get rid of exactly because of his origins
(i.e. that he is English). This does not mean that he might be Christian (he certainly was not) but that his life is immersed in Christianity, and that is why he uses these images even when he tries to pretend that he already got rid of them.
In this respect, the high windows can refer to a church (in the sense of
"the high building I see every day"), although this is not the meaning a
Christian would uphold. This church is only the image of his most prominent theme, the symbol of an age that has already declined (with his generation, as the poem proposes). Still it is in the very "blood" of every member of European culture.
Nevertheless, I also accept Booth's point of view that these windows are
Larkin's own, since that is a biographical fact. However, this does not mean that the high windows of a room cannot take on the image of church windows. The voice of the poem elevates Larkin's study into a sacred environment, a church, in the poet's mind, just as Christians find God in prayer as they immerse into their inner temples.
A further reason why Christianity could be important in the poem is that its basic situation has to do with expiration. The upcoming generation has taken on new roles in life, just as Larkin had done when he was young.
That does not mean that the next generation would have it better, which projects that coming generations will always have their own innovations, and all human beings will always face their own passing while observing a new generation. 'Passing' is a fundamental issue that Christianity tries to deal with. To put it very profanely, they say that dead souls go to heaven, up above is the endless blue sky. The image of the sky, therefore, is simply an imagery derived from the "kids" of the first stanza.
Still, there are images that either question the validity of these new laws of life, or they refer to the poet's envy of the young (Swarbrick 135).
The main image is the slide that refers to a downward direction, that is a

direction towards Hell, or in a more common imagery, something bad, as in such words as "lower class", "downfall", etc. "Going down the long slide /
To happiness" is therefore ambiguous, either meaning "exhilaration or panic" (Lerner 31) quite like saying that common and ugly things are the source of happiness.
We have to see that two different shapes come out of the poem. One is a circle that represents the circularity of the poem (the cyclic quality of the generations was also suggested by Lerner 31). Sliding downwards to the upper regions means that every downward movement ends up in an upward movement and therefore the whole movement is circular. Also, the two occurrences of endless, first associated with the bottom then going to the top, makes endlessness a whole, a circle. Also the diverse imagery "He / And his lot will all go down the long slide / Like free bloody birds" raises the image of circling birds (drawing a parabola) from their upward slide (as eagles swoop upon their prey).
The other geometrical forms that come out of the poem are two lines.
Every generation has some novelties they could make of their own.
Larkin's generation could dispose of Christianity as a compulsory religion, while the following generation could have a freer sexual life . That does not mean that Larkin's generation was more restricted, only that it was different. The whole image is a linear one. It is also important to point out that it is not a "downward line" but a constant, therefore horizontal one.
The thought of up and down has another important role. Even if it is pointed out that to be a part of a later generation does not mean automatically to be "better" or "worse" in any way, still we have the visual image of the earlier generations "above" the later ones. Both Larkin and the generation before him imagined that the younger generations were in a slide. Larkin was not "sweating in the dark // About hell", which might mean that he was closer to Hell than those who did. However, when he is older, he looks down on the young from his high windows. At the same time, the elder generations who have died are above him in Heaven. This image presents another line, a vertical one. Obviously, these two lines, especially with a circle at the point where they intersect, make up a cross. It may be too farfetched to say that this was Larkin's intent, however.
The numerous images suggest that the poem uses symbolistic techniques, as Motion (1992, 81) claimed. The most interesting image in this poem is

the "sun-comprehending glass" that can be associated with Shelley's
"Dome of many-colour'd glass" in 'Adonais' (line 463). Since 'Adonais' was written on the occasion of Keats's death, it is on the boundary between life and death, and it can be considered as a religious poem, even though Shelley himself was not a religious poet.
Bringing this line from 'Adonais' into context ("The One remains, the many change and pass; / Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; / Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity, / Until Death tramples it to fragments.", lines 461-465), we can see that the "many-colour'd glass" refers to eternity as "The suncomprehending glass" does to endlessness in 'High Windows'. This is, therefore, another evidence of the religious interpretation of the poem's ending.
'Vers De Société'
Besides many implicit allusions, this poem in the fourth stanza explicitly articulates the name of God. "Talking to God (who's gone too)" in my reading means that God did exist in an earlier period. With this, the poem can be associated with 'High Windows'. Both poems claim that the generation before Larkin's had - or claimed to have - a different point of view regarding religion.
Unlike the narrator of 'High Windows', who is more likely to be associated with Larkin himself as Booth's remark of his own windows might suggest, the narrator of 'Vers De Société' is a detectable character who has many different "voices" in the poem e.g. "cynic, jester, failure, and forgiver" (Kuby 153). Therefore, we have to separate the author from the poetic persona (Booth 92). These provide the fluctuation of the tone of the poem that helps to define the mood of a party. In modern society parties are the main social events, therefore they can be associated with the latest changes in society that Larkin might want to project.
The poem's "language fluctuates between colloquial obscenities and quiet sadness, cynic and humanist and the satiric speaker's derogatory epithets" (Kuby 154). This might show the different feelings that the poem consists of. Being at a party evokes several different feelings, the ones that are one's real thoughts and those that one has to pretend to think or feel. This is reflected in the poem's fluctuations.

The narrator still calls it "funny how hard it is to be alone". This can refer either to the difficulty of being alone i.e. the pressure to live a social life, or the difficulty to bear to be alone. The latter might be more important from our point of view, because it provides an evolutionary explanation about the alienation of present-day society. People in the previous generations enjoyed being together, people of Larkin's generation are the first to prefer to be alone, and this is something that is still strange to the narrator. This is an unconscious aspect, since the narrator obviously prefers to be alone to chatting with "some bitch".
The narrator seems to think that parties are a waste of time, but that society is an important feature of human life, therefore everyone has to bear the discomfort that goes with such events. Solitary would be ideal for him but since it is socially unaccepted (put into words with such emblems, as "Virtue is social") he remains "weak" to accept the invitation
(King 21). The importance of this is emphasized by Larkin as a "humane and civilized member" of society in his poetry (Heaney, 152).
Interestingly, Christianity is based exactly on social features (to be good to other people even if those are not good to us, to help others or to talk about Christianity to others, etc.). The main image of the poem from the perspective of my paper is how the loss of Christianity causes the decline of social activity.
"Are, then these routines // Playing at goodness, like going to church?" is another interesting line. This might mean that being Christian is considered something "good", therefore to go to church makes the person who does so someone who is "good" . Hence, the people who are not religious still go to church only to be "good". This is a very positive attitude towards Christianity that cannot be found in most of Larkin's other poems.
Of course there could be another interpretation of the image, namely that people are not really religious but are still the hypocrites who go to church and feign piousness. This interpretation would indicate that to be
Christian evokes a positive attitude towards Christians, which is also very unusual for Larkin.
If one were to adhere to the point of view that Larkin believed religion has disappeared from our society, as was seen in 'High Windows', the conclusion would be that only hypocrites attend church, therefore
Christianity itself is a masquerade. Since I do not believe the idea that

there are no religious people in the world anymore, I will abandon this interpretation.
On the other hand, the previous generation's Christianity had value. By claiming that "No one now / Believes the hermit with his gown and dish /
Talking to God … " the narrator exhibits a positive attitude towards this previous age. Larkin liked to call himself a hermit , but if hermits do not exist anymore then this role of Larkin's is gone too (Rossen 37). This age where hermits were almost as respected as God Himself was over, and by the time the poem was written, both hermits and Christianity had become pejorative. Therefore, the age where Christianity was common and compulsory was more social than Larkin's age, and with Christianity gone, society in Larkin's time has become more hypocritical and alienated.
Society and its influence are very important in human life, but modern civilized people become more and more alienated. This produces many hypocrites, especially at superficial social gatherings. Modern civilization resulted in an alienated society, and there is no cementing force to help solve the situation. Christianity was very effective in this sense, but with
Christianity gone, this effect is also gone.
'Fiction and the Reading Public'
This early poem of Larkin, written on 25th February 1950, has a very interesting topic; it is about how a "reader's response" would sound. The poem overall is likely a collection of the things readers would like to hear.
From the perspective of my paper, the most interesting part of the poem is the middle of the second stanza, "Let it be understood / That
'somehow' God plaits up the threads, / Makes 'all for the best'".
In my reading, the given date indicates that the lines refer to the end of the war, and therefore God may "come back" and start over what He has abandoned during the war, that is to help people to be good. In this reading, the poetic persona expects a world in peace just like it was before the wars. Since this is in the imperative, it might also refer to a more or less general desire on the part of the public that it needs to see proof of peace and the end of war. They also need proof that such a disaster would never happen again. To get this proof, the readers ask the poet to assure them of this.
This poem, therefore, is a nostalgic one longing for the old and innocent days (by which it can be associated with 'Faith Healing', 'MCMXIV' and

'Arundel Tomb'), also to peace and tranquility that is lost with the war.
In contrast to Larkin's other poems, this one does not say that God is gone, but exactly the opposite. In light of his other works, this might either be ironical, as the readers ask for something that is really nonsense, or Larkin did think in his younger years that normal life would come back and only later did he find out that this is impossible. The former possibility is more likely, that this poem (among others) tries to call attention to Larkin's thesis that there is "no God anymore", and the wish that the days before the wars be back is only a way of getting away from reality. That would be a very strong criticism on society and on literature (Swarbrick 80).
This idea can be brought to the fore by adding the three earlier lines, so the whole stanza is "But that's not sufficient, unless / You make me feel good - / Whatever you're 'trying to express' / Let it be understood /
That 'somehow' God plaits up he threads, / Makes 'all for the best' /
That we may lie quiet in our beds / And not be 'depressed'." Seen as a whole converts the meaning of the stanza into claiming that the only way to make somebody feel good (i.e. to fulfill one's needs) is to make him believe. The need to believe is a vital human necessity, even if Lerner (18) would have us think that it is only fiction. This comes back as a central issue in 'Church Going' and will therefore be discussed there.
The image of the generation gap can be detected here as well as in 'High
Windows', and involves the demand to "please me for two generations".
This image both recalls the vertical separation of the different generations and calls for a poet who can reunite them. The narrator - the reader - asks for such a poet, one who is not attached to his own age but able to talk to people of all ages. This is what makes a true poet and also what Larkin wanted to achieve. On the other hand, in 'High 'Windows' this enthusiasm is already over and the poet (knowing that he has already succeeded in achieving this goal) is able to reflect on generation gaps.
Conclusion
The last poem, 'Fiction and the Reading Public' concludes with the ironical message that God will come back. If this conjecture was true, we could not say that there was never any God, since if there was no God ever, He could not be gone. This leads to the conclusion that of all the poems in this second group, this latter one claims that God did exist. Thus the main connection between the poems discussed in this section is that they

all claim that God did exist, which is a very interesting notion, considering that Larkin is considered an atheist poet.
All poems touch the notion of a real God Whom we have to reach or
Whom we cannot reach, because we live in an era that does not know God.
This thought is not atheist but one that misses a God and wants either to have one or to replace Him with something instead. The most important function of reflecting on generation gaps and alienated generations is to express the lack of God and fill the hiatus. All poems indicate that generations that had a God had more tranquility than the generations of the present.
'High Windows' deals with endlessness and also with the changing essence of society. The main essence in his generation is that Christianity is not necessary anymore, therefore there is "no God anymore". 'Vers de
Société' also claims that Christianity is not an essential issue of society, which results in alienation and hypocrisy especially to those who pretend to believe in God. The essential idea that "God's gone too" can also be found in the poem, here resulting not in an increasing freedom as in 'High
Windows' but in decreasing social activity. 'Fiction and the Reading
Public' is an early poem of Larkin's; therefore, it is difficult to define whether it presents a point of view other than the later poems or is extensively ironical and critical, though it is likely that the second option is true.
To conclude, the second group of poems I have discussed in my paper are poems that state a deist religious view in the sense the 18th century understood it, namely that God has created the world but has now abandoned it. This is still a religious point of view and deals very profoundly with the issue. We cannot say, therefore, that Larkin did not have any opinion on religion, since these poems show a very consequent and strong opinion on the topic.
This section contains two poems that are set in a world earlier than
Larkin's present. These are 'MCMXIV' and 'An Arundel Tomb'. Both these poems claim that there was an age where God did exist, although they do not explicitly state it. It has to be noted here that there is another poem that is set in a Christian era, 'Livings III', which has been discussed above.

Ancient Monuments
In 'MCMXIV', the idea of Christianity is less detectable, only the last stanza alludes to it. "Never such innocence" might refer to Larkin's point of view that to believe in God might lead to such disasters as a four-year long world war, but it might also refer to the notion of Christ's innocence and His thought of children. The children are the most innocent people in the world therefore they are to be the first to reach Heaven.
Innocence in this sense might refer to the faithfulness of the age and its people. They lived in a more peaceful world than the later generations because they were faithful. On the other hand, the next generation (that was Larkin's, who was born in 1922) lost its faith because this innocent age of peace has gone. "Peace" in this sense does not mean that there were no wars at all, but there was no war that was as bloody long and worldwide as this. By experiencing this war, people started to doubt weather God does exist. "As changed itself to past / Without a word" might refer to this notion.
Since the poem is set in a bygone age of innocence (Kuby 124), what follows is the age of experience (Morrison 155) in Blake's interpretation.
This leads to the "latecomer's" (Morrison 198) melancholy, which sets the nostalgic tone of the poem, and also the mythical era that gives the setting a whiff of Christianity.
Another important Christian principle is the unity of the family. There are many references to it in the poem, e.g. "dark-clothed children at play" or more explicitly, "The thousands of marriages / Lasting a little while longer". Less Christians got divorced than non-Christians.
The age described in the poem that recalls the Thomas-era (Longley 124) is truly about peace, which is also a Christian notion. The "Shadowing
Domesday lines" might refer to the continuity of England's history until
World War I. "The countryside not caring" or "the pubs / Wide open all day" refers to an age where there were no fears of an attack but where being in the country meant peace and tranquility.
"Holding her hand"
Most critics writing about 'An Arundel Tomb' emphasize that its main topic is that love survives life (e.g. Rácz 22, Kuby 177), if not in real but in virtual terms. Others (including Larkin himself ) doubt whether it is

love itself that remains instead of art (Swarbrick (133) quoted Motion too, Ward (181) called this emotion "not deeply felt" or Rossen (34) found this love "problematic") and point out that it is the sculptor's work of art that endures (Booth 79). The double meanings of the verb "lie", i.e. to lay or to speak an untruth (Swarbrick 50), might refer to this ambiguity.
"They would not think to lie so long" could stand for love, on the other hand, it could also be a reference to resurrection never occurring (Rossen
32).
An 'Arundel Tomb' has a unique and evident technique of perspective.
The first stanza takes a look at the sculpture; the narrator provides an overview of it. In the second stanza he comes closer to it and examines the parts of the figures from which he explores a very important element, which for him at least is rather shocking, namely that the husband and wife are holding hands.
What follows from this exploration is the main idea of the next stanzas, a journey back in time. This can be observed in the grammar and word usage too, as Booth (144) has pointed out (e.g. "voyage" or "sweet commissioned grace"). The third stanza arrives at the time of the couple's death and the "sculptor's sweet commissioned grace". Now we are in the "pre-baroque" age. From this, we travel forward in time. In the fourth stanza the couple are facing their fate of changing "to soundless damage" where their "eyes begin / To look, not read." They have to face a long "voyage" through time to eternity. In the fifth stanza, we see how the sculpture is being weathered. There are many references of the tomb's damaged state throughout the poem, e.g. "blurred", "vaguely" or
"to look, not read", as mentioned above. The poem becomes timeless with the contrasting yet cyclic (Rossen 33) images of snow and summer-grass, litters of birds and bone-littered ground. Finally we arrive at our time with the "altered people" (i.e. us), the past and the present is contrasted
(as many pointed out, including Booth 144 and Kuby 177). The "tenantry" became nothing but a ghost from the past, a remark of a sculpture's battle with time (Kuby 177), still, the only thing what remained of the couple's effigy in this world, "a trough / Of smoke", is love.
The final line has the poem's chief message, "What will survive of us is love". The importance of this line is emphasized with its rhyming too, since the rhyme scheme in the previous stanzas is abbcac but in the final stanza the last and the second before the last lines do not rhyme, therefore the scheme is abbxax. From the rhyming stanza, the last, not rhyming word sticks out.

This love, since it is one of Christianity's main themes and chief teachings, is the most important connection between the poem and the essay. This is an endless, Christian kind of love (since the couple lived in a
Christian era) therefore this love is endless because it is a Christian love.
This can connect the poem to 'Faith Healing' in which the essential thesis is the same: to love and to be loved is essential. Still, many critics have pointed out that the central message is not to love, but to only "almost" love (e.g. Rácz 22, Kuby 177), by reading the last two lines together "Our almost-instinct almost true / What will survive of us is love."
'An Arundel Tomb' is associated with Christianity in two ways; firstly, it is travel in time to an age where Christianity was compulsory and natural, secondly its chief message is to love, which is the same as the chief teaching of Jesus.
In this section, four poems will be discussed in pairs. The first pair is
'Church Going' and a juvenilia, 'A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb'. The first will be treated more briefly since it is the best known and most discussed poem of Larkin's. The other poem is an antecedent of the first
(Motion 50), therefore the connection between these two poems will be examined in this essay.
The other pair of poems, 'The Building' and 'Ambulances' discuss transcendence and death. Since one of the chief aims of religions is to find an answer to "the life after death", this concept must also be discussed. Of the two poems, 'The Building' is more important, therefore it will be examined more briefly than 'Ambulances'.
"A prayer killed into stone"
'Church Going' is the best known, most discussed and most quoted poem written by Philip Larkin. Since its literature is so huge, there will be only a brief introduction of the main views in this essay, with specific views quoted only if they relate to my own points. 'A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb' is not a widely known poem, mostly because it is a very early one.
Since it is a minor work of Larkin, I will discuss it together with 'Church
Going'.
Critics have examined 'Church Going' from many aspects. Exploring the form of the poem, it was seen that it has a strict rhyme (ababcadcd) and

rhythm (iambic tetrameter) scheme (Morrison 229), although some lines do not rhyme at all. The title's meanings have been discussed by many critics as well, Parkinson (228) gave three interpretations - the act of going to church, the customs that keep church alive and visiting the church (as one goes to the theatre ) - Rácz (70) and Morrison (227) gave a fourth interpretation - the disappearing church. The vocabulary is consciously chosen, the equilibrium of Christianity-related and nonreligious words can be seen (Lerner 19). Religious words are for example
"ruin-bibber" that appeared in the King James Bible, or "ghostly", which both means "spiritual" and "saint" (Parkinson 228). The word "serious" meant "religious" until the 19th century, which allows for a different interpretation of the poem (Lerner 18 - to be discussed below). Rácz emphasized the many interrogatives and blasphemic words in the poem
(77). On the other hand, the language is conversational (Kuby 132) with many contemporary references (Whalen 16). James (106) pointed out that there are "smiling rhymes" in the poem as "ruin-bibber, randy for antique"
(which is made humorous by alliteration).
Discussing the content, the critics examined three main points (in addition to many other, very specific ones) which shall be mentioned here.
The first is the question of belief. Kuby claims that "when disbelief has gone", seriousness remains (109), Lerner states that belief is only fiction therefore the need to believe is what remains (18), Swarbrick calls the ceremonies themselves illusory (66) and illusory is something that should be avoided (Rácz 72, Kuby 113, Motion 1992 65). The second is the narrator himself, who is clumsy, fallible (Rácz 73, Motion 1993 241,
Morrison 230), bored and ignorant (Lerner 17); still searching for religion
(Rossen 35); therefore having two different tones, one clever and one sensitive (Whalen 14). The third thought in the poem is the isolated
(Whalen 17, Rossen 35), meditative poet (Lerner 17, Kuby 111) who is, or at least pretends to be, "less deceived" (Kuby 112, Motion 1992 65, Rácz
72).
The chief question in my opinion is why an atheist wonders often about
"When churches will fall completely out of use"? Larkin, although he claimed to be an atheist, still had many thoughts on the question, and did not seem to solve them. The poem suggests that he thinks of the Church as a still working institute, otherwise the question quoted above would be meaningless. More likely, he thinks that churches still work somehow
(even if not perfectly) as the word "completely" suggests. All the forthcoming thoughts are about the future, as a "what, if". In my reading this does not mean that Christianity is already in ruins and nobody

believes anymore, rather there is a vague prediction about a time when
Christianity is no longer optional but totally forgotten. The discussion will show that the poem's conclusion is that there will never be a time without religion as long as rational people are alive. The poem is an exploration of this theme with the same technique as in 'An Arundel Tomb'.
If 'An Arundel Tomb' was a journey back in time, this is a journey into the chosen future. The first two stanzas give a description of the present. The narrator viewing the church is clumsy and ignorant (Rácz 73) and, most importantly, an atheist, still, he is impressed by the church itself. He claims that "the place was not worth stopping for" but right afterwards adds, "Yet stop I did". This alternation of views on religion can be seen everywhere in the poem. Therefore the question is whether to believe or not, which contradicts Motion (1992, 60).
The second half of the third stanza (from "if we shall keep / A few cathedrals chronically on show") describes the near future, when churches will be useless but not forgotten, just turned into museums. The fourth stanza offers another option for what churches could become: places of superstition. This is not further from the present but a different option of what could happen, if the basic prediction would come true.
From "what remains when disbelief has gone" (in the fourth stanza) we travel further into the future when the churches begin to be weathered
(as in the fifth stanza of 'An Arundel Tomb'). The buildings would be "A shape less recognizable each week" where only the "ruin-bibber" would know what a church would have been.
This evokes 'A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb' which is the description of not only a church but the "scaffolded mind" too. The narrator worships the church but sees its damage and that it could not give security to the people who were working there (which would have been common in earlier days). But even if the workers are dead, they are in peace and that is a good effect of the church and faith. Still, it has the hypocrisy of 'Vers de Société' since the church itself seems to be unhurt as it "Runs and leaps against the sky", and is "created deathless".
Nevertheless, "what patterns it is making" are patterns of damage; the church remains "when disbelief has gone".
The sixth stanza of 'Church Going' already merges future and present, and only the last line shows that the stanza is about the narrator's

present. The narrator of the first two stanzas comes back with his ignorance, clumsiness and awkwardness, he states again what he has stated in the second stanza (quoted above), that although he has "no idea
/What this [church] is worth; It pleases [him] to stand in silence
[t]here". This could mean that the narrator is touched by religion, and although he has never experienced God as a living Being, he does respect those who can sense such a phenomenon.
The last stanza is closely connected to the present, still it becomes timeless and with this, everlasting. "Since someone will forever be surprising" might be interpreted as if the narrator, though calmly wondering about churches disappearing, finally came to the conclusion that the need to believe is an essential need of human beings, therefore there would never be a time when churches would be gone. This last stanza can be associated with the fourth one, where the question "what remains when disbelief has gone?" is raised. The answer is: no human, no living being, only "Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky". If we connect these two stanzas, the fourth stanza's last word, "sky", can be associated with the last line of the last stanza, "so many dead lie around."
These together present the conclusion that the dead bodies are in heaven, therefore the real answer to the question above is: If disbelief has gone, human nature has gone as well. This is the need to believe, mentioned earlier.
Since this ending is close to accepting Christianity, we might expect that it is not Larkin's point of view. This is suggested by the technique he uses to distance himself from the meditating views. This "multilayer" technique is based on the "characters within a character". Larkin the person is outside the poem, Larkin the poetic persona, invents the character of the clumsy intruder, who in turn has his own - meditative - character. This fourth, meditative layer is the one that gets close to the point of view that religion is something that is needed.
The language of the poem also suggests this point of view. In the lines where the clumsy character is in the foreground, the language is simple and conversational ("though", "some brass and stuff", "God knows how long"), while the meditative character uses many religious expressions
("parchment, plate and pyx", "rood-lofts", "equably"). Some words are from the King James Bible ("ruin-bibber", as Parkinson (228) suggests), and some words used to have a strong Christian meaning, such as "serious"
(meaning religious, as Lerner (18) suggests) or "ghostly" (meaning spiritual and saint, as Parkinson (229) suggests).

If we accept Parkinson's suggestion of the interpretation of "serious" then the lines, "someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself to be more serious" means that religion will never be lost "completely". In addition, the third stanza suggests that there will always be people to search for God or something to believe in, "Wondering what to look for", therefore religion will never fade away. To the question of what remains if disbelief is gone or what remains if belief is gone, the answer seems to be the same: there is no human race without a belief in something. The line "that much never can be obsolete" suggests that belief will never die even if it rejects the state of being "less deceived" (as the title of the volume would suggest), since in church "our compulsions meet [...] and
[are] robed".
Having drawn such a conclusion it must nevertheless be said that this thesis has to be dissociated from Larkin, simply because it is very far from his views on Christianity. The wish to be "less deceived" is denied here with the claim that although belief makes for nothing but lies, it is still necessary because it provides stability in life .
The duality of the narrator-character gives the poem a frame, even though the final stanza falls out of this frame - not without a purpose, as will be discussed later. The frame itself is a person, a very ambiguous person, who cannot decide between science and religion. He has two
"minds", a clever and cynic and an open and sensitive one (Whalen 14), and these two debate. Interestingly, the first is always the one who states something, e.g. "this place was not worth stopping for" or "I've no idea / what this accoutered frowsy barn is worth". The second thinks these statements over immediately to come up with a different point of view that may not be rational but always seeks for proof of religion emotionally e.g. "wondering what to look for" or "for which / was built this special shell [ … ] pleases me to stand in silence here". To put it differently, this person is both "Bored, uninformed" and "tending to this cross of ground", as the narrator states about the "representative" of himself.
The "special shell" entices the intruder to stay there, but it is also a place of worship, and the narrator of 'A Stone Church Damaged by a
Bomb' does worship it. He does not only worship the Church because it seems to be deathless (since he knows that it is a lie) but because it can face death around it and can still work as if nothing happened ("bells /
Beat" or "Windows throw back the sun"). Still, "death remained / To

scatter magnificence" and it betrays the building, since the narrator recognizes the "patterns" of damage.
The last stanza of 'Church Going' provides another interpretation of the poem, changing both the speaker's point of view and the subject. The narrator becomes transformed from the clumsy, ignorant man to an independent thinker and the subject changes from the actual issue about churches to the problem of religion itself, thereby transcending the poem's immediate content. This stanza is not only a conclusion of the poem but takes the thoughts on the topic further. By this, Larkin, the poet, gets closer to the narrator, and the views expressed here are closer to his own. It provides another interpretation of the poem, and at the same time it continues the thought that was not finished in the stanza before, namely "who / Will be the last [...] to seek / this place for what it was?" It answers that there will be no such person because
"someone will forever be [...] serious", and therefore religion will never fade away.
The symbols used in the poem come back in this last stanza (and are similar to the symbols of 'A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb'), e.g.
"cross of ground" here as "serious earth" ("chiseled, flung-up faith", or
"magnificence" while the "serious earth" was "shapeless" in the juvenilia) or "superstition, like belief, must die", here "so many dead lie around"
("the dead are shapeless" or "death remained"). The last stanza's symbols suggest that there is a need for a "serious earth", but the poet is the only one who cannot find what it gives to mankind. There will always be somebody who can obtain what the church offers, and he wants to be one of these people. There is a kind of envy in this last stanza since before, the poem was trying to pretend that churches are worthless, while here the poet admits that he is searching for the worth of churches.
The last line, "so many dead lie around", offers also another interpretation, especially if it is coupled with "Though where they lie /
The dead are shapeless in the shapeless earth" (of 'A Stone Church
Damaged by a Bomb'). As it was seen in 'An Arundel Tomb', lie has two meanings and these two meanings lend two interpretations to the poem.
Here, too, is another interpretation, assuming that lie means "to tell an untruth"; the final conclusion is that the dead lie about church and its indispensability, therefore churches are worthless, since to "gravitate
[...] to this ground" will not tell the truth, only lies. This also suggested by the thought that "all our compulsions meet / Are recognized and robed as destinies", since this exhibits a negative attitude towards the church. It

could also mean that what the dead lie about is that church is a place of peace, and yet they died there (in 'A Stone Churhc Damaged by a Bomb'), and therefore it cannot be peaceful.
To sum this up, the main message of the poem is that no matter how hard the poet tries to pretend how uninterested he is in the subject of religion, at the end it becomes clear that he does search for it. Although the Church is described as either something negative or something uninteresting, the narrator still searches for it. Only the dead know the truth about whether there is or isn't a heaven, but the narrator cannot decide if they would tell him the truth or only "lie round".
'A Stone Church Damaged by a Bomb' is the poem of experience, as opposed to 'MXMXIV', which was the poem of innocence. "The prayer killed into stone" remains in silence and becomes the emblem of the post-
Christianity era. This prayer is the past that could not survive the loss of religion and thus had to die. The damage the war has inflicted is therefore not only seen in a building but in faith itself too, it is an irreversible damage, but one that gave "freedom" to Larkin's generation.
That is the main message of the poem.
Fear of Death
'The Building' and 'Ambulances' are two poems that are mainly concerned with the image of malady and death, but their closeness to views on religion requires that they be discussed here. The images of a confessional and cathedral provide the religious interpretation.
What the two poems obviously share is their double-meaning, hospitality explicitly and the Church implicitly. There are two main reasons why these two emerge in the text, the connection between death and transcendence has been mentioned before, the other is that public healthcare is the new hope of people to escape from death for a short time. Medicare, therefore, is a new religion, the religion of science and of human knowledge.
The concept of 'The Building' is based on opposites, of inside and outside, imprisonment and freedom (Swarbrick 129 and Rossen 33), death and life, past and present, church and hospital, uniqueness and sameness.
'Ambulances' has the same contradictions; the vehicle represents death itself, which can take anybody away at any time. Both poems represent that happiness is only fiction .

Inside and outside and imprisonment and freedom are closely associated with each other, inside either the building or the ambulance the ill are confined and cannot do anything against this. While the people inside are
"restless and resigned", the kids outside "chalk games". We still do not know which is real, what we think to be real, or is the "real" life outside a
"touching dream to which we all are lulled", and getting into the building is to "wake up separately". In 'Ambulances' the people inside are described as immobile subjects "that overtop / Red stretcher-blankets", while outside are "women coming from the shops / Past smells of different dinners", which smells are pleasant (opposed to the syntactically delayed therefore emphasized "frightening smell" of inside 'The Building').
Death and life are both dreams in these poems. Life is a dream of happiness that cannot be reached while death is an unconscious dream that nobody alive knows about. The ill of 'Ambulances' are unconscious, while the ambulance men are like death itself that "come to rest at any kerb". From the personal tragedy the spell of death becomes communal, even if it is described as a "personal fate" (O'Brien 27). The simile
"confessional" provides a religious interpretation of the poem (as the ill of 'The Building' "confess that something has gone wrong"). By this interpretation the people get into the confessional to experience rebirth and get back to a new life. This interpretation involves the real function of ambulances i.e. to heal the body of people as confessionals heal the soul (this opposite has been discussed in 'Faith Healing'). 'The Building', on the other hand, is a place of healing too. The poem provides a description of people who are waiting for their death ("All know they are going to die"), still, there is a notion of healing and returning to real life
("someone walking by it / Out to the car park, free") even if "chances are beyond the stretch". The new generation has new values; it is not the church that is being trusted but the hospital.
This notion leads to the opposites between past and present. In this respect, these poems can be associated with 'High Windows'. The generation before Larkin's had the faith to trust God's will. They prayed to be healthy and therefore they went to church instead of hospitals.
With Larkin's generation this has changed, now the hospital took on the role of churches (Rácz 164). This is noted in the poem as "unless its powers / Outbild cathedrals". This opposite is not only between two generations, but also between two beliefs, the one in Christ and another in science. The generation of Larkin has become a believer in human knowledge, which is a cause of their fear, since there is no transcendental element they can trust, only themselves, who do not understand what is

happening. This is a fear of the unknown, while the followers of a religion know (or rather think they know since they believe), therefore they do not fear what comes after. On the other hand, Larkin's generation thinks that belief is a deception (Motion 1992 65), therefore it is better to know that we do not know than not to know that we do not know.
The notion of sameness is present all through 'The Building', the people have to discover their sameness (Swarbrick 1219) in the hospital, while outside they feel to be individual beings. Here they are some of the many to be healed as they "tamely sit". This impersonal quality of the "wild white face" that both poems show leads to the fear of the ill (Swarbrick
120). The sameness can be detected in the waiting room, where "humans, caught / On ground curiously neutral" are in a place where "past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those", which makes the building inscrutable. Not only the building is impersonalized but whole society
(which links to 'Vers de Société', where meeting up is only a must and therefore alienation is the chief characteristic of people).
On the other hand, going to a hospital leads people to do something extraordinary instead of their daily routine (Swarbrick 130). This leads to the notion in 'Faith Healing' of people who "sheepishly stray". Facing death provides an opportunity to think our lives over and therefore to find the individual within us. The problem with this is that most people, as
'The Building' states, will "have come to join / The unseen congregations".
They will be able to rethink their lives only "on the other side", the transcendent side, which might be called Heaven, since the language of the poem suggests this interpretation. The people who recognize this will
"love to lie / Unreachable inside a room" in order to reach transcendence.
These are the people who do not fear death but recognize that they cannot "construct a religion" that makes use of humans but only based on transcendence. In other words, this is the recognition of the "need to believe".
Voyage is an important notion in the two poems: an ambulance travels all day, while the waiting room of a hospital is "like an airport lounge". At the same time, hospitals are not only places of arrival but also of departure - to the transcendent world. Conversely, the place of death is not only a hospital but also the waiting room of a place eof transport, where people can make themselves ready for the long voyage.
The ending of the two poems leads to the concept of transcendence; the ambulance "Brings closer" to death as well as rebirth by confession. The

hospital cannot "contravene / the coming dark" and cannot "Outbild cathedrals", therefore it remains what it was before: a place to heal and not to offer faith. Even if the "crowds" try to get rid of religion and of
God, they cannot survive without some kind of belief.
The aim of this essay was to present the poems by the atheist poet Philip
Larkin, which carry a religious meaning, and to elucidate the religious content of these poems. The poems were grouped into sets according to their specific religious features.
The ones dealing with ancient religions, as 'Water' and 'Solar', were interpreted based on the religions of primitive cultures. An ironical view was also mentioned, which emerged from the notion about how easy it is to construct a religion. While 'Water' had the main image of baptism described in the poem, 'Solar' was closely associated with worshipping in primitive cultures, as Akhenaton did in 'Hymn to the Sun'.
The first group of poems discussed contained those that converted a scene of the New Testament to present day society, giving an interpretation of today's world with the help of the Bible. These poems had many Biblical references and contained many of Christ's teachings.
'Faith Healing' deals with the problem of separating the healing of the body from the healing of the soul, since the first is no more than a
Hollywood show while the second is the Christian notion. This notion leads to the main teaching of Christ, to love and to be loved, which is exactly what the women are searching for in the poem. 'The Explosion' takes the scene of the Resurrection and places it into a miners' colony, which comes to believe that it is seeing the dead walking to heaven. Both religious and ironic interpretations are detectable here, since from a religion's point of view the poem describes the faith of the miners' wives, while from an ironic point of view the poem is a description of the "more deceived" who cannot see the truth behind their faith. 'Livings III' is set in 18th century Cambridge, still it evokes the Last Supper. To dine without the
Master leads to a deficit of faith, which the diners cannot overcome and therefore their dinner becomes odd and boring.
The second group of poems contained those that claim that God is gone, and consequently that there was an age where there was a God. 'High
Windows' deals with the problem of the generation gap, from the generation before Larkin's, which still had a God to the one after his,

which was able attain sexual freedom. Freedom is something relative, however, because only the endless sky can give total freedom, which, at the same time, is unreachable. 'Vers de Société' treats the concept of an alienated society which the poet does not want to belong to. Also, this poem tries to find an answer to the question why God and the hermits have disappeared. 'Fiction and the Reading Public' emphasizes the need for a God Who can bring happiness to the reader after a war.
The following set of poems dealt with an age where God was still alive,
'An Arundel Tomb' and 'MCMXIV'. The latter describes the age of innocence, while 'Arundel Tomb' deals with the problem of an "almost" love that perseveres through centuries. 'A Stone Church Damaged by a
Bomb' was mentioned alongside 'Church Going' since the former is not a very important poem. Both dealt with the notion of the "need to believe" being an essential human and therefore human kind cannot exist without belief. 'Ambulances' and 'The Building' lead to transcendence and death, and how people can face death in a secular and alienated age.
The conclusion of my essay is that although Larkin is called an atheist, secular poet, many of his poems deal with Christianity. The religious references in these poems are not accidental but deliberately chosen by a poet who felt the need for religion but could never attain it. Larkin is himself the clumsy visitor in 'Church Going' who, though asserting his disregard for religion, still has a need to believe, which he might find in
God.
Primary Literature
1. Larkin, Philip: Collected Poems, Anthony Thwaite ed. Victoria: Marvell
Press and London: Faber and Faber, 2003.
2. Shelley, P. B.: 'Adonais' in: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Ferguson et. al. ed. London, New York: WW Norton and company, 1997. p. 489.
3. Akhenaton: Hymn to the Sun. Collected at 30th October 2004. .
4. The Holy Bible, Authorized King James version. Iowa Falls: World Bible
Publishers. Undated.
Secondary Literature

1. An Sonjae / Brother Anthony: Without Metaphysics: The Poetry of
Philip Larkin. Collected at 24th September 2004. .
2. Booth, James: Philip Larkin: Writer. Herfordshire: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1992.
3. D. Rácz István: A szép majdnem igaz, Philip Larkin költészete.
Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 1999.
4. Davie, Donald: 'Landscapes of Larkin' in Thomas Hardy and British
Poetry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. pp. 63-82.
5. Everett, Barbara: Poets in their Time, Essays on English Poetry from
Donne to Larkin. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986. pp. 230-245 and 246-257.
6. Hall, Richard R.: The Question of Psalm 104. Collected at 20th October
2004. .
7. Ian Hamilton: 'Bugger me Blue' in London Review of Books, 22 October
1992. p. 3-4.
8. Heaney, Seamus: 'Englands of the Mind' in Preoccupations, Selected
Prose 1968-1978. New York: Faber and Faber Limited, 1991. pp. 150-169.
9. King, P. R.: 'Without Illusion' in Nine Contemporary Poets. London and
New York: Methuen, 1979.
10. Kuby, Lolette: An Uncommon Poet for the Common Man, The Hague:
Mouton & Co. N. V., Publishers, 1974.
11. Larkin, Philip: Required Writing. London: Faber and Faber, 1983.
12. Lerner, Laurence: Philip Larkin. In Writers and Their Works series.
Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., Plymbridge House, 1997.
13. Longley, Edna: 'Any-angled Light' in Philip Larkin and Edward Thomas in Poetry in the Wars. Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1987. pp.
113-140.
14. Maxwell, Glyn: 'The amber round the poem'. In TLS January 29 1993. pp. 9-10.

15. Morrison, Blake: The Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980.
16. Motion, Andrew: Philip Larkin. In Contemporary Writers series. New
York: Routledge, 1992.
17. Motion, Andrew: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life. London: Faber and
Faber, 1993.
18. O'Brien, Sean: The Deregulated Muse. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books
Ltd., 1998.
19. Rossen, Janice: Philip Larkin, His Life' Work. New York, Harvester and
Wheatsheaf, 1989.
20. Starbrick, Andrew: Out of Reach, The Poetry of Philip Larkin. New
York: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1997.
21. Thwaite, Anthony ed. Further Requirements, Interviews, Broadcasts,
Statements and Book Reviews by Philip Larkin. London: Faber and Faber,
2001.
22. Thwaite, Anthony ed. Larkin at Sixty. London: Faber and Faber, 1982.
23. Walcott, Derek: 'The Master of the Ordinary'. In The New York
Review, June 1, 1989. pp. 37-40.
24. Ward, John Powell: The English Line, Poetry of the Unpoetic from
Wordsworth to Larkin. Houndmills and London: MacMillan Education Ltd.,
1991.
25. Watson, J. R.: 'The Other Larkin'. In Critical Quarterly 17.4, 1975. pp. 347-360.
26. Whalen, Terry: Philip Larkin and English Poetry. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986.