SpokenVerse | Sad Steps by Philip Larkin (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded February 2014 | Updated October 2024, 10 hours ago.
"The strength and pain of being young", is the most telling phrase for me, in that both diminish with age. It is true that life becomes more comfortable once self-disesteem has been overcome, it gets easier when the growing pains are over. Then one has to accept one's own ineliminable limitations and the inevitability of physical decline and death.
Middle-age is the time when the illusion of immortality starts to fail, mostly due to mundane daily reminders such as prostatic hyperplasia - the need to get up during the night for a piss. By then the conceits of youth have vanished. The moon is no longer a symbol of love or art, but a dispassionate, unchanging observer of our change-of-life. Immensements is an abstruse word, maybe he used it because he he was talking about art - it's more common in French literature.
It will make more sense if you consider this sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney, written in about 1580.
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languisht grace
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?
I couldn't find any night pictures of Hull. The closest location I found was from a biking club called the Sheffield FridayNightRide sfnr.org.uk/about I was tickled by their motto "We have nothing to lose but our chains" - which is from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx: "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"
Moon through the window:
http://threesixfive.co.za/2012/02/04/and-the-moon-be-still-as-bright/moon-through-the-window-2/
The picture of the sad girl is called Admemento and it's a downloadable desktop wallpaper.
abstract.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/842645
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shaped gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
"The strength and pain of being young", is the most telling phrase for me, in that both diminish with age. It is true that life becomes more comfortable once self-disesteem has been overcome, it gets easier when the growing pains are over. Then one has to accept one's own ineliminable limitations and the inevitability of physical decline and death.
Middle-age is the time when the illusion of immortality starts to fail, mostly due to mundane daily reminders such as prostatic hyperplasia - the need to get up during the night for a piss. By then the conceits of youth have vanished. The moon is no longer a symbol of love or art, but a dispassionate, unchanging observer of our change-of-life. Immensements is an abstruse word, maybe he used it because he he was talking about art - it's more common in French literature.
It will make more sense if you consider this sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney, written in about 1580.
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languisht grace
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?
I couldn't find any night pictures of Hull. The closest location I found was from a biking club called the Sheffield FridayNightRide sfnr.org.uk/about I was tickled by their motto "We have nothing to lose but our chains" - which is from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx: "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"
Moon through the window:
http://threesixfive.co.za/2012/02/04/and-the-moon-be-still-as-bright/moon-through-the-window-2/
The picture of the sad girl is called Admemento and it's a downloadable desktop wallpaper.
abstract.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/842645
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shaped gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
