Figurative Language

The Language of Literature

Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Literary texts
A work of literature is always a coded text,
in parts it may use figurative language
(figures of speech or tropes),
and as a whole it always communicates
ideas different from its literal meaning.

Therefore the student of literature must learn

the various techniques of decoding literary
texts.
 Figurative language
Language which uses figures of speech;
for example, metaphor, metonymy,
synecdoche, simile, alliteration,
hyperbole, etc.

Figurative language must be

distinguished from literal language.
 Literal language
Language use that takes the meaning of
words in their primary and non-figurative
sense, as in literal interpretation.
 Literal language

vs

literary language
 Literal / Literary
Literary = of, relating to, or having the
characteristics of letters, humane
learning, or literature

Literal = adhering to fact or to the

ordinary construction or primary
meaning of a term of expression

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 Literal / Figurative
• It’s heavily raining / pouring with rain /
the rain is pouring
• It is raining cats and dogs / the rain is
coming down in buckets

• You’re a pretty sight = You look awful

• You’ve got slightly wet, didn’t you? =
You’ve got drenched with rain
 Speaking figuratively
• you say less than what you mean
• or more than what you mean
• or the opposite of what you mean
• or something other than what you
mean
 Figurative speech
Broadly defined:
Any way of saying something other than the
ordinary (literal) way.
(From the antiquity on rhetoricians have
defined over 250 separate figures.)
Narrowly defined:
A way of saying one thing and meaning
another. Language that cannot be taken
literally.
 Figures of speech / Tropes

Figures of speech = tropes

Trope (Greek ‘turn’)

denotes any rhetorical or figurative device
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin
(1922–1985)
1 The trees are coming into leaf
2 Like something almost being said;
3 The recent buds relax and spread,
4 Their greenness is a kind of grief.

5 Is it that they are born again

6 And we grow old? No, they die too,
7 Their yearly trick of looking new
8 Is written down in rings of grain.
 
9 Yet still the unresting castles thresh
10 In fullgrown thickness every May.
11 Last year is dead, they seem to say,
12 Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 The Trees

2 Simile
5-6 Rhetorical question
5-6, 6-7 Contrast, antithesis
9 Metaphor
11 Personification
12 Repetition (increase, crescendo)

4, 8, 10 Alliteration
1 The trees are coming into leaf
2 Like something almost being said;
3 The recent buds relax and spread,
4 Their greenness is a kind of grief.

5 Is it that they are born again

6 And we grow old? No, they die too,
7 Their yearly trick of looking new
8 Is written down in rings of grain.
 
9 Yet still the unresting castles thresh
10 In fullgrown thickness every May.
11 Last year is dead, they seem to say,
12 Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
1 The trees are coming into leaf
2 Like something almost being said;
3 The recent buds relax and spread,
4 Their greenness is a kind of grief.

5 Is it that they are born again

6 And we grow old? No, they die too,
7 Their yearly trick of looking new
8 Is written down in rings of grain.
 
9 Yet still the unresting castles thresh
10 In fullgrown thickness every May.
11 Last year is dead, they seem to say,
12 Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 THE TREES

2, 4, 5 Uncertainty, vagueness,
hesitance, instability (fear)

7 Turning point

11 Uncertainty (hope)
 A figure of speech
An expression
extending language beyond its literal meaning,
either pictorially through metaphor, simile,
allusion, personification, and the like,
or rhetorically through repetition, balance,
antithesis and the like.
A figure of speech is also called a trope.

The Harper Handbook to Literature, ed. Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker,

George Perkins. New York: Harper & Row, 1984
 Metaphor
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances

William Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act Two, Scene 7

The world is not literally a stage. But Shakespeare

figuratively asserts that the world is a stage thus reveals
the mechanics of the world and the behaviour of the people
within it.
 Metaphor
I. A. Richards in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1937)
describes a metaphor as having two parts:

the tenor
the vehicle.

The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed.

The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed.

In the above example "the world" is the tenor, and "a

stage" is the vehicle; "men and women" forms part of the
tenor and "players" of the vehicle.
 Tenor and vehicle
tenor = the purport or general drift of thought
regarding the subject of a metaphor
vehicle = the image which embodies the tenor

tenor = the concept, idea, new element

vehicle = the image to illuminate the tenor
 Metaphor
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances
 Figurative language

Metaphor (Greek 'to transfer‚ to carry over’)

How to spot metaphor: textual and contextual signals

Metaphor and simile in poetry:

figurative language with a purpose

The effects of metaphor: denotation / connotation

denotation = what is referred to
connotation = associations, connecting images,
ideas, moods, etc.
 Figures of speech:
metaphor, simile
Used as means of comparing things that are essentially
unlike.
Figures of speech in which one thing is described in terms
of another.

Metaphor – the comparison is implied, implicit, i.e. the

figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal
term
Simile – the comparison is expressed, explicit (like, as)
 Metaphor and simile
Metaphor:
"O Rose, thou art sick.” (William Blake)
No sign of comparison: vehicle stands for tenor

Simile:
“O my luve's like a red, red rose” (Robert Burns)
luve = tenor red, red rose = vehicle
like = grammatical indicator of similarity
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Conceit
An extended metaphor (conceit, concetto)
establishes a principal subject (comparison)
and subsidiary subjects (comparisons).

Used extensively by English metaphysical

poets of the seventeenth century.
John Donne
(1572–1631)
 A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
[excerpt]

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

    Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
    Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

    As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
    To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

    Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
    And grows erect, as that comes home.
 Compasses
George Wither
1635
 Catachresis
A mixed metaphor (catachresis) is one that leaps from one
identification to a second identification inconsistent with the
first. It can be deliberate or unintentional.

Example:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
(Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene I)
 Cliché
A dead metaphor (cliché) is one in which
the sense of a transferred image is absent.

Example: "to grasp a concept" uses physical

action as a metaphor for understanding.

Dead metaphors normally go unnoticed.

Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Carol Ann Duffy
(1955)

SIT AT PEACE
 (from The Other Country, 1990)
When they gave you them to shell and you sat
on the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopes
with your thumb, minding the queues of peas, you were
sitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace, all summer.
 
When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the back
of your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundless
in a cave of pain, you ran to your house,
a greeting wean, to be kept in and told once again.
 
Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peace
on a coloured-in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimes
your questions were stray snipes over no-man’s land,
bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey. Sit –
 
At – Peace! Jigsaws you couldn’t do or dull stamps
didn’t want to collect arrived with the frost.
You would rather stand with your nose to the window, clouding
the strange blue view with your restless breath.
 
But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they came
from nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet room
you were glad of. A long silent afternoon, dreamlike.
A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.
 Imagery
Representation through language of sense experience

Image
- visual imagery (mental image)
- auditory imagery (sound)
- olfactory imagery (smell)
- gustatory imagery (taste)
- tactile imagery (touch)
- organic imagery (internal sensation, hunger, fatigue)
- kinesthetic imagery (movement, tension in the
muscles)
 Further figures of speech
Synaesthesia /sɪni:s’θi:zɪə/ – the mixing of
sensations, the concurrent appeal to more than
one sense (e.g. hearing a colour, seeing a
smell)
Personification – give the attributes of a human
being to an animal, an object or a concept
Metonymy /mɪ’tɒnəmi/ – the use of something
closely related for the thing actually meant
Synecdoche /sɪ’nɛkdəki/ – the use of the part for
the whole
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Metonymy / Synecdoche
METONYMY = “substitute naming” – an
associated
idea names the item:
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

SYNECDOCHE – a part stands for the whole or

the
whole for a part:
“Listen, you've got to come take a look at my new
set of wheels.” (One refers to a vehicle in terms of
some of its parts, "wheels“.)
 Even further figures of speech
SYMBOl – something that means more than what it
is.

ALLEGORY – a narrative or description that has a

second meaning, with more emphasis on the
ulterior meaning than on the surface story.
Unlike metaphors, it involves a system of related
correspondences.
Unlike symbols, it puts less emphasis on the images
for their own sake
 Allegory / Symbol
A narrative that serves as an extended metaphor.
Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables,
poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre.
The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that
has characters, a setting, as well as other types of
symbols, that have both literal and figurative
meanings. The difference between an allegory and
a symbol is that an allegory is a complete narrative
that conveys abstract ideas to get a point across,
while a symbol is a representation of an idea or
concept that can have a different meaning throughout
a literary work.
 Examples of allegory
Plato’s Cave allegory (The Republic, Book VII)
Aesop’s Fables
Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene
George Orwell’s Animal Farm
 Allegorical figures in
Thomas Gray’s (1716-1771)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
(excerpt)

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
 Gray cont.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
 The portrait of Thomas Gray
by John Giles Eccart (1747-1748)
Southwell Minster
Carvings in the Chapter House
of Southwell Minster
Carving in the Chapter House
 Figures of speech easy to confuse

Image, metaphor, and symbol are sometimes difficult

to distinguish.

An image means only what it is.

A metaphor means something other than what it is.

A symbol means what it is and something more, too.

It functions literally and figuratively at the same time.
 Rhetorical figures
• simple repetition /'rɛpɪ'tɪʃən/
• parallelism /'pærəlɛˌlɪzəm, -lə'lɪz-/
• antithesis /æn'tɪθəsɪs/
• climax /'klaɪmæks/
• hyperbole /haɪ'pɜ:rbəli/ 
• apostrophe /ə'pɒstrəfi/
• irony /'aɪrəni, 'aɪər-/ 

Find examples for each in the quotation from

Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man (1732-1734):
Repetition
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 The Trees
Lines 1, 9 Repetition
Lines 2, 11 Repetition

Repetition of words, phrases, lines

Literal (verbatim) repetitions
Synonymous repetitons
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(1914–1953)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
 
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 Further rhetorical figures
Paradox – an apparent contradiction that is
nevertheless somehow true
Hyperbole (overstatement) – exaggeration,
adding emphasis to what is really meant
Understatement – saying less than what is
meant
 Paradox
Emily Dickinson
1732

My life closed twice before its close –

It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
 Irony
a trope, a non-literal use of language like
metaphor, metonymy, etc, also can be
conceived as a rhetorical figure
• a type of tone, a particular way of
speaking/writing, a matter of style,
• can be widespread in text
(unlike metaphors which are usually
discrete parts of text)
 Paradox
John Donne: The Legacy
(excerpt)

When last I died (and, dear, I die

As often as from thee I go),
Though it be but an hour ago,
And lovers' hours be full eternity,
I can remember yet, that I
Something did say, and something did bestow;
Though I be dead, which sent me, I should be
Mine own executor and legacy.
 Irony
• ironic meaning WE have to construct
• DIFFERENCE between apparent meaning and true
meaning
• the text as a whole or a large part of it is unreliable if
taken literally
• an implied (vs explicit) interpretation is true

Example:
difference between text and situation:
“WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.” – when all sorts of
things go wrong
 Mechanisms and techniques of irony

• overemphasis of inverted meaning:

Yes! I'd really like that!
• internal inconsistency
- in narrative: narrator is shown not to have seen the
truth
- in style: unexpected change in register
unexpected change of rhythm
unexpected alliteration
rhyme fails to appear
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Effects of irony

Irony which destabilizes:

• where the intended meaning is difficult to
pinpoint
• internally inconsistent text
• literal meaning is insufficient
• no specific, authoritative or unified
worldview – a final, implied meaning
remains elusive
 Types of irony

Verbal irony – saying the opposite of what is meant

Dramatic irony – discrepancy between what the speaker says

and what the author means

Irony of situation – discrepancy between the actual

circumstances and those that would seem appropriate or
discrepancy between what one anticipates and what actually
comes to pass
 Allusion
A reference to something in history or
previous literature.

It is like a richly connotative word or a

symbol, a means of suggesting more
than it says.
T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE 

Come live with me and be my love, 

And we will all the pleasures prove 

John Donne (1572–1631)

THE BAIT

Come live with me, and be my love, 

And we will some new pleasures prove

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

TO PHYLLIS

Live, live with me. and thou shalt see

The pleasures I’ll prepare for thee
HAMLET
To be, or not to be – that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep –
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to

William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

 Literary allusion
„if Poetry comes not as naturally as the
leaves to a tree it had better not come at
all.”

John Keats, Letter to John Taylor, February

27, 1818
Philip Larkin

THE TREES
 
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
 Larkin alluding to Keats
May his allusion imply that poetry does not come like
leaves to a tree but only as a result of painful labour?

Did Larkin indicate that he personally, unlike

romantic poets, did not trust allegedly uncontrolled
outbursts of inspirational energy?

Was he uncertain about the role of the poet or his own

role as a poet?