The Whitsun Weddings, Philip Larkin, Analysis & Summary
"The Whitsun Weddings" is a poem by Philip Larkin, first published in 1964. The poem describes a train journey taken by the narrator on Whitsun weekend (a British holiday that falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter) from Hull to London, during which he observes several wedding parties at the stations along the way. Through the observation of the weddings and the changing landscape, the poem reflects on the themes of time, mortality, and the transient nature of human experience. The Whitsun Weddings: Poem Text That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inlan…