Larkin also uses similes and metaphors to illuminate the passage of time, he uses the idea of relationship. Larkin also uses word choice and phrases such as “clasped” jointed” and “holding her hand” to bring the point across that these people did love each other however , the idea of the lack of clarity is also emphasised therefore relationships are not always clear. Lack of clarity appears quite often in the poem, the first line of the poem reads to outsiders “their faces blurred” and then in the second line the word “lie” is written, these two words together make you think about it in a little more detail, that there faces are blurred because they aren’t telling the truth.
Furthermore, word choice is important in helping us to consider the issue of time. There are contrasting words in the poem, such as “sharp tender shock” which is a contrast because if you get a sharp shock it isn’t going to be very tender, similarly “their supine stationery voyage” shows a contrast because when you think about stationery you think about staying still and when you think about voyage you think of travelling. He uses this to make the reader think about contrasts between the Earl and Countess. There is also a lot of alliteration of sibilants in the poem, such as “soon succeeding”. The sh and h sounds in the poem bring across soft, peaceful sounds reminding us of eternal sleep which in a sense is what death is, for example “helpless in the hollow”. The word “lie” is ambiguous because it has two meanings and in the poem the reader could take the word lie for either meaning. The word pre-baroque is a word that I think is quite good because it simply means plain and old which brings your mind back to the passage of time.
In the third stanza, the last line reads “ the Latin names around the base” this is also included in the passage of time because when the tomb was made people would have been able to look at the base and understand what it means but now not many people would be sure what it says because the world change and less people learn Latin now and so people wouldn‘t understand it.
The last verse is important in helping us to understand the importance of time because it includes almost everything that the rest of the poem has within it, it contains alliteration “time has transfigured”, it includes more lack of clarity and untruth in the second line with the simple word “untruth”. The second last line in the stanza changes the meaning of the last line “our almost-instinct almost true” shows a lack of clarity, Larkin isn’t all too sure about the last line which reads “what will survive of us is love” I think this gives the idea that love is idealised and that people like it to be the most truthful thing but a lot of the time it isn’t.
As a whole, the poet effectively conveys the significance of the passage of time, I think that the poem as a whole portrays that love doesn’t always withstand the passage of time however much we want it to. The poem wants us to think about the passage of time and how things change from one time to another. I think Larkin thinks that love is not the issue, that the passage of time is.
In conclusion, I enjoyed this poem and it made me think about the changes that time holds for everyone. I particularly liked in the enjambment, or connection between the fourth and fifth stanza “to look, not read. Rigidly they persisted, linked through lengths and breadths of time” the fourth stanza flows gently into the fifth stanza. I liked this enjambment because it shows you that the time has changed. Some time ago people would have read what the tomb said and now people just look because the lengths and breadths of time have changed people.
Gillian Wishart