Philip Larkin at Nineteen

Not the ideal poem to read after an invigorating swim...

From "The North Ship", 1945,

"Are you prepared for what the night will bring?
The stranger who will never show his face,
But asks admittance; will you greet your doom
As final; set him loaves and wine; knowing
The game is finished when he plays his ace,
And overturn the table and go into the next room?"


First published in  Cherwell, 28/2/1942, when Larkin was a nineteen-year-old undergraduate at St. John's College, Oxford. He was born on August 9, 1922. He graduated in 1943. He "went into the next room" on December 2, 1985.

Thirty years later: "Going, Going" (1972).

"Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
– But what do I feel now? Doubt?"
Philip Larkin reads the poem.


What was I doing as an Oxford undergraduate when I was 19?

Larkin loved traditional New Orleans jazz. I loved the blues