Summary
In the first stanza, the speaker situates the poem on Whitsun, or Whit Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter and then a popular time for weddings in Britain. He describes a leisurely hot day on a lonely, “three-quarters-empty” train and begins to detail the sights the train passes by, such as a dock and a river. The “breadth” of the wide landscape with no people mentioned mirrors the mostly-empty train, and both create a sense of isolation for the lone traveler. Though the speaker mentions being “late” in the first line, concerns of time seem irrelevant on the train, where “all sense/Of being in a hurry [is] gone.”
The second stanza continues the description of the peaceful landscape introduced in the first stanza. The train travels slowly on the hot day, passing farms, canals, and other natural sights. Again, no people appear, heightening the sense of isolation. The train passes through several towns, but they are “nondescript,” boring and monotonous.
Beginning the third stanza, the speaker mentions that he initially didn’t notice the ubiquitous weddings that appear at each station. Distracted by the heat, he pays little attention to the cool shade where the couples stand. The couples are “pomaded” for the special occasion, meaning that pomade, a scented ointment, has been applied to their scalps, and the women all wear similar dresses that the speaker criticizes, calling them “parodies of fashion.” In contrast to what one might expect of a deeply in love couple preparing to start their lives together, these couples are “irresolute,” or uncertain.
The speaker continues to describe the wedded couples, who catch his curiosity, in the fourth stanza. Yet he views the scene critically and depicts the people involved in a grotesque manner, mocking the appearances of the fathers and mothers, the inappropriate speech of an uncle, and the myriad of accessories the brides wear, such as “nylon gloves” and costume jewelry.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker clarifies that these couples are returning from their weddings as the day is “coming to an end” and people return from various wedding venues, from cafes to banquet halls. He emphasizes the sheer number of newlyweds present—at every stop, new couples board the train. The speaker also notes that despite the festivity of the celebrations, the children present seem bored, just as he is.
In the sixth stanza, the fathers of the newlyweds are seen to be amazed by the scope of the weddings, but also view them as “farcical,” or ridiculous and absurd, while the mothers bond over their shared experience of attending the weddings, which the speaker likens to a “happy funeral,” an oxymoron. The wedding attendees are “free at last” after a perhaps-tedious ceremony, and the speaker returns to characterizing the landscape outside the train.
At the beginning of the seventh stanza, the fifty minutes, referenced in the previous stanza, that the wedding-goers are on the train is just enough time to complain about (“I nearly died”), whether because of the heat or the boring ride. The train passes an Odeon, a British movie theater chain. The speaker characterizes the wedding-goers as self-absorbed, each ignoring the other wedding parties “they would never meet,” though they are all united on the train for an hour. Meanwhile, the speaker thinks of his destination of London.
The train passes other trains (“Pullmans,” an old type of luxury train) and walls of moss as the final stanza begins, and the overlap in the passengers’ lives (“this frail/Travelling coincidence”) is almost over. As the train slows and arrives, the speaker feels like he’s falling and compares this sensation to a shower of arrows turning into rain.
Analysis
The poem begins on a mostly-empty train on Whitsun, more commonly known in the United States as Pentecost, a Christian festival that marks the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples, which in turn represents the beginning of the early Christian church. (Similarly, weddings, which appear soon, signify the beginning of a couple’s life together.) At the beginning of the poem, there is harmony between the natural and industrial world as the river, sky, and Lincolnshire itself “meet.” This harmony will shift as the poem progresses.
The image of heat sleeping that begins the second stanza emphasizes the slow, lazy pace of the train and the day. The poem’s rhyme scheme, ABABCDECDE, was pioneered by the poet John Keats, and the pastoral natural imagery of this stanza also appears frequently in Keats’s work. Yet the depiction of peaceful nature is interrupted by industry—the “nondescript” towns and “dismantled cars,” and gloomy, outmoded relics—just as the quiet train ride is soon interrupted by the lively wedding-goers.
The speaker presents quite a cynical view of the married couples in the third stanza. Though they are “grinning,” suggesting happiness, they’ve pomaded their hair, which indicates artifice, and the young women’s wedding dresses are “parodies of fashion,” laughable and falling short of dignity rather than being beautiful. Furthermore, the couples are “pos[ing],” again underscoring the artifice of the scene. In this stanza, Larkin begins extended the final line of the stanza into the beginning of the next stanza, adding to the easy, natural cadence of the poem.
Though the speaker separates the people into “fathers,” “mothers,” and other figures in the fourth stanza, he simultaneously homogenizes them, categorizing people from various families together. This technique emphasizes the sameness of the people he describes. Though they are meant to be the center of attention on their wedding day, the married couples are instead interchangeable, blending in with one another. The portrait the speaker creates of the families he observes is not flattering—the poorly dressed fathers, “fat” mothers, vulgar uncles, and artificially costumed brides are all lacking in dignity.
The omnipresence of married couples and their families in the fifth stanza adds to the speaker’s sense of isolation. The families are coming from all over the country (“cafes,” “banquet-halls,” “coach-party annexes”), making it seem that everyone else is involved in festivity the speaker is not a part of. They join with the speaker on the train as he refers to “we,” rather than to them in the third person separately from himself.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker further underscores the ridiculousness of the scene before him. On a day when they are expected to be proud of their children, the fathers of the newlyweds are instead astonished by the “farcical” nature of the ceremony, and the speaker compares the wedding to a “happy funeral.” Weddings are an ending in a way, just as funerals are—since the couple is expected to spend the rest of their lives together, the ceremony marks the end of new romantic relationships. (Larkin himself never married, perhaps indicating cynicism towards the institution.) Furthermore, the once idyllic depictions of nature become more negative as fields transform into “building-plots” and the speaker notes the shadows—a classic dark image in poetry—of the poplars.
The landscape continues to become increasingly industrial in the seventh stanza as the train passes a movie theater (“an Odeon”) and a cooling tower. The speaker likens London to a field of wheat, however, blending a modern, urban scene with the poem’s earlier natural imagery. The speaker returns to separating himself from the others, using “they” rather than “we” as he describes his fellow passengers looking outside. Notably, the countryside is described with more depth and nuance than any of the speaker’s fellow passengers, underlining their homogeneity.
In the final stanza, the train stops meandering and takes a more definitive route, “aim[ing]” towards London and “rac[ing],” in contrast to the beginning of the poem, when “all sense /Of being in a hurry” was “gone.” The industrialization of the landscape continues, and the little nature that remains, the moss, is “blackened” and dying. In the final lines of the poem, the speaker alludes to Cupid’s “arrow-shower.” Yet this symbol of passion, the arrows show by the Greek god of love, which turns indifference into infatuation, in Larkin's poem become mournful, turning to “rain,” and the poem ends on an ambiguous note.
