This Be the Verse

“The Trees” by Philip Larkin (1974)

If “This Be The Verse” is a pessimistic poem that presents people as trapped in inherited patterns of thought and behavior, “The Trees” presents a different perspective through an analogy drawn from nature. Trees’ leaves die each year, but they manage to come alive again, as seen by the yearly addition of a tree ring. The speaker sees this as a message: “Last year is dead, they seem to say, / Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”

“Dockery and Son” by Philip Larkin (1964)

The poem’s first-person speaker is Larkin himself, who visits his old college and hears that Dockery, the son of a former college acquaintance, is now enrolled as a student. The poem is a meditation on the different choices that the speaker and Dockery made—Dockery to have a son, and Larkin (following his own advice in “This Be The Verse”) deciding not to. Dockery thought that having a son would make him greater, but Larkin thought the opposite. He considers his own position, with “no son, no wife” and makes a general reflection that anticipates the mood of “This Be The Verse”: “Life is first boredom, then fear.