Larkin, Philip. "To Failure".
Summary
- the speaker addresses failure in a free and irregular soliloquy
- muses about the way failure comes: the 1st stanza describes how it does not come, the 2nd describes the state after its coming
- failure does not announce its coming "dramatically" like a supernatural monster ("dragons"), a notice of warning ("Clearly set out to warn what can be lost"), or a "ghost"
- after its coming the speaker notices boredom, silence, and emptiness and knows things are soon to fall apart because failure "[has] been here some time."
Analysis
- modernized sonnet, unrhymed; enjambment
- failure = approximates to the concept of death
- mourns the quickly passing time and impending death against the background of a lack of warning against both the quickness and the ultimate failure of one's life
Basics
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Author
Larkin, Philip. (1922 - 1985). -
Full Title
"To Failure". -
First Published
In: Collected Poems. London: The Marvell Press and Faber and Faber, 1988. -
Form
Poem.
Works Cited
Larkin, Philip. "To Failure". Collected Poems. (1988). London: Faber and Faber, 2003.