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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Let us begin with the facts. What does the speaker do before he goes into the church?
He makes sure that no service is under way, and then he slips in. The door closes behind him with a thud.
Why does he want the church empty?
Because he wants to look around on his own terms, without joining in anything.
At the end of stanza 1 he removes his cycle-clips. What is odd about that?
He has no hat to take off, so he does the nearest thing. It is awkward and a little funny, but it shows a kind of respect.
And what happens at the lectern in stanza 2?
He reads aloud and finishes far too loudly, and the echoes seem to laugh at him.
Stanza 2 ends with a verdict that the visit was hardly worth the trouble. Is that the last word?
No. Stanza 3 admits that he stops at churches often, so the verdict was not quite honest.
How does he feel each time he leaves?
Unsure what he was looking for.
Then the poem looks ahead. What is he wondering about?
What will happen to churches when nobody uses them. A few may become museums and the rest may be left to the weather.
What does stanza 4 add?
Superstition. People might still come at night to touch a stone, gather herbs or watch for ghosts.
In the middle of the poem the speaker says that superstition will die too. What picture follows?
A ruin, with weeds and brambles and open sky, and nobody who knows what the place was for.
Whom does he imagine as the last visitors?
People who like old buildings, sentimental visitors at Christmas, and maybe someone like himself.
In stanza 7, which word carries the answer?
Serious. The church is a serious place, and people will always feel a hunger to be serious.
Does the speaker become a believer?
No. He respects what the church stands for, and the dead around it make it a place to become wise.
the poem moves from a visit (stanzas 1 and 2) to a confession and question (stanza 3), to speculation about the future (stanzas 4 to 6) and to a conclusion (stanza 7).
offhand details, a clumsy gesture of respect and a comic scene at the lectern show a speaker who pretends to be unmoved by the church.
the speaker contradicts his earlier verdict, admits that he often stops at churches and widens the poem from I to we.
stanza 4 imagines folk customs surviving round the church, and the middle of the poem then says that superstition too will die, leaving a ruin.
the speaker imagines the kinds of people who might be the final visitors and includes himself among them, which shows his honesty.
stanza 7 calls the church a serious place that meets a permanent human need, and ends with the dead buried around it, without returning to belief.
Explaining a gesture: when the speaker takes off his cycle-clips at the end of stanza 1 (lines 8-9), he borrows the traditional gesture of removing a hat in a holy place. Because he has no hat, the substitute is awkward and comic, and it shows that he feels a respect he cannot explain.
Explaining a comic moment: in stanza 2 the speaker reads aloud from the lectern and finishes much too loudly, and the building's echoes seem to snigger back. The church mocks his play-acting, which shows how uncomfortable he is while pretending to be at ease.
Explaining the turn: the opening of stanza 3 contradicts the verdict at the end of stanza 2, because stopping at churches is a habit of his. This reveals that the casual manner hides a real attraction, and it launches the poem's questions about the future.
Explaining the ending: stanza 7 does not answer in terms of belief. It says that the church meets a permanent human need to be serious, and that the dead buried around it make the ground a fit place for wisdom.
One and two, he steps in as a guest; three turns round and starts the quest; four brings stones and ghosts of old; five and six leave ruins cold; seven stands where the dead are found, and seriousness is common ground.
Picture a tourist who joke-reads a lesson in an empty church, signs the visitors' book and walks out sure it was dull. That night he cannot stop wondering what will become of the building, who will visit it when it is a ruin, and why he keeps stopping at such places. By the end of the week he has his answer: it is a serious place.
Every Echo Tells Spooky Ruins Secrets stands for Enter (stanza 1), Echo (stanza 2), Turn (stanza 3), Superstition (stanza 4), Ruin (stanzas 5 and 6) and Serious (stanza 7).
W.W.W. - What happens, What the speaker thinks or feels, What the stanza adds to the whole poem
Term
How many stanzas and lines does "Church Going" have?
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What does the speaker do at the end of stanza 1?
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What do the echoes seem to do in stanza 2, and what is this device called?
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Which stanza is the turning point, and why?
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What picture do stanzas 5 and 6 present?
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What is the keyword of stanza 7?
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A stone basin, usually near the church door, that holds the water used for baptism; the speaker touches it in stanza 2.
The reading stand in a church from which passages of the Bible are read aloud; the speaker reads from it in stanza 2.
A small container, often of precious metal, in which the consecrated bread of the communion service is kept; it belongs to the treasures imagined behind locked cases in stanza 3.
A gallery above the screen between the nave and the chancel, which once carried the rood or crucifix; it is the kind of detail that only church enthusiasts would know.
Medicinal herbs, each used alone as a remedy in old folk medicine; the cures imagined in stanza 4 are of this folk kind.
Metal clips that hold trouser legs against the ankles so that they do not catch in a bicycle chain; the speaker removes his at the end of stanza 1.
Deep respect, especially for something regarded as sacred; the speaker shows it awkwardly and half against his will.
Having no connection with religion or religious belief; the speaker is a secular visitor to a religious building.
This lesson explains Philip Larkin's "Church Going" one stanza at a time. It follows the speaker from a casual visit to an empty church, through his doubts about what will become of such buildings, to the serious closing stanza.
"Church Going" has seven stanzas of nine lines each, and every stanza does a particular job. Stanzas 1 and 2 tell the story of a visit: a sceptical cyclist slips into an empty church, takes in its furnishings, plays at reading a lesson aloud, leaves a coin and decides the place was hardly worth the trouble. Stanza 3 reverses that verdict and begins the poem's big questions about what happens to churches when nobody uses them. Stanzas 4 to 6 speculate about superstition, ruin and the last people who will ever come, and they show the speaker's own honest uncertainty. Stanza 7 concludes that the church is a serious place that answers a permanent human need. This lesson explains each stanza in turn, so that you can answer both short and long questions with confidence.
Philip Larkin's "Church Going" appeared in his collection The Less Deceived (1955). It has seven stanzas of nine lines each, 63 lines in all, written in a loose iambic pentameter with a rhyme pattern that repeats in every stanza. The speaker is an ordinary, sceptical man who has cycled to an empty church. Read in order, the stanzas make four stages: a casual visit (stanzas 1 and 2), a confession and a question (stanza 3), a long speculation about what will remain when belief fades (stanzas 4 to 6) and a quiet, serious conclusion (stanza 7). Line numbers are given below so that you can refer to the poem exactly in an answer. Keep your textbook open and read each stanza before you read its explanation.
The speaker first makes sure that no service or other event is under way, and only then steps in. The heavy door closes behind him with a dull thud, which tells us at once that the building is hollow and quiet. He takes in the ordinary furnishings of any parish church: bare stonework, seating, floor matting, small books, cut flowers left to turn brown, brass objects at the altar end and a small organ. The vague, careless way he names the sacred objects shows how little they mean to him. Yet he cannot shrug off the silence, which feels strained, stale and impossible to ignore, as if it had been brewing for a very long time. The stanza ends with a small gesture that is both comic and touching. He is hatless, so he cannot do the traditional thing and remove a hat in a holy place; instead he removes his cycle-clips (lines 8-9), a self-conscious show of respect from a man who does not believe.
He touches the font, the stone basin used for baptism, tracing its rim with his hand like a tourist. He looks up at a roof that seems surprisingly fresh and admits that he cannot tell whether the work was a simple cleaning or a full restoration; someone else would know, but he does not. Then he climbs to the lectern, reads out a few verses and ends them with the formula that closes a Bible reading in an Anglican service, but far too loudly for his own comfort. The building's echoes seem to snigger at him for a moment, so that the church appears to mock his play-acting. At the door he signs the visitors' book, leaves a small Irish coin and tells himself that the visit was hardly worth the trouble. The last line (line 18) is flat and dismissive, and a first-time reader may think the poem has finished.
The opening of this stanza contradicts that verdict: stopping at churches is a habit of his, not a one-off. Each time he leaves unsure what he was looking for. Then the poem opens out from the personal to the general. He begins to wonder what will happen to churches when they are no longer used at all. Perhaps a handful of the grandest will be preserved as museums, with their treasures (old documents, silver vessels and the small container for the sacrament) locked away, while the rest are left to the weather and to grazing animals. Perhaps people will shun them for fear of bad luck. The question that closes the stanza (line 27) is the first of many that carry the poem forward. Notice that the pronoun changes from I to we, because the question concerns a whole society.
The speaker goes on with his possibilities. Even when people no longer accept the church's teaching, the building may keep a hold on them through old folk belief. He imagines people bringing their children by night to touch a stone believed to have power, gathering herbs as a cure for a grave illness, or keeping watch on a traditional night in the hope of seeing a dead person walk. These pictures are slightly comic and slightly eerie, and the speaker treats them with amused scepticism. The idea is that when belief goes, something of the church's old power may linger as superstition. In the last three lines of the stanza (lines 34-36), however, he adds that superstition will die just as belief does, asks what will be left once disbelief is complete, and begins the answer with a picture of an overgrown ruin.
The picture of a ruin that began in the last line of stanza 4 (weeds, brambles, broken stonework and open sky) now carries on: the building gradually loses its outline and its meaning. The speaker wonders who the final visitor will be, the last person to come to it as a place of worship rather than as a curiosity. He imagines the likely candidates: architectural enthusiasts who inspect old stonework and make notes, the lover of ruins, the sentimental visitor who comes at Christmas for the atmosphere, and perhaps a figure much like the speaker himself, uninterested and ill-informed yet still drawn there. Behind the guessing lies honesty. He admits that he cannot put a value on the building, yet he finds a quiet satisfaction in simply being inside its silence, and he recalls what such a place was made to mark: the great turning points of a human life, such as weddings, christenings and funerals, and the thoughts they provoke.
The final stanza gives the poem's answer, and its keyword is serious. The speaker describes the church as a place where people's deepest drives (compulsions) are brought together, acknowledged and given the weight of destiny. That, he argues, can never go out of date, because there will always be someone who feels an inner hunger for seriousness and is drawn to ground like this. He has heard that such ground is a good place to become wise, and the poem closes on the reason he is prepared to accept: the dead buried all around it. The last six lines (lines 58-63) are one long sentence that moves steadily towards that final image (line 63). The speaker does not return to belief. What he affirms is a lasting human need that the church has served, and the poem ends in sober respect, not in faith.
The poem moves from the particular to the general (one church, then all churches), from description to meditation and from a joking tone to a grave one. The speaker's pronoun moves with it: I in the visit, we in the questions, and 'our' and 'someone' in the conclusion. Each stanza answers a question left by the one before it, which is why the poem reads like one continuous train of thought.
Refer to stanzas and lines by number and describe images in your own words. For any stanza, say what happens, what the speaker thinks or feels, and what the stanza adds to the whole poem.