Philip Larkin is highly recognised as one of the poets whose poems revolve around poems of failure, demise, ageing, grief and such pessimistic and depressing issues. However, this poem “The Trees” of his doesn’t seem to contain any of these dark thoughts. This particular poem can labelled as a motivational poem. Nonetheless, Larkin does show his doubts and envies in some places. Also, we can see that this poem has a lot of phrases that cannot quite be articulated as a reader which probably shows Larkin’s unwillingness to further elaborate on the matter – matters that are vey difficult for him to speak about.
Larkin’s has used quite a number of sound effects in order for the reader to not only see but hear his poetry. In the first line itself, we see that he has used an “ee” sound, “trees” and “leaf”, this sound tends to reverberate and tends to give us the idea of filling up spaces just like the trees do. Also, the same sounds repeat in the 4th line in words like “greenness” and “grief””. As we go to the third line we come across the sound “re”, “recent”, “relax”, and “spread”; these are very long sounds- this can be connected to the spreading out of the leaves. Furthermore, in Line 9 we come across sibilant sounds, “still”, “unresting”, “castles”, “thresh”, which suggests the motion of the trees like as if they are brushing against each other creating a swishing sound. Moreover, in the 10th line the double “ss” of the thickness suggests the massiveness of the trees. The same visual image is also given by the word “castles”, the reader views the trees of being gigantic and regally ancient just like a castle. These auditory images held us feel the poem, and we are pulled to where the poet is: probably admiring the beauty of the tree but at the same time despising one’s incapability to be born again and again- just like the trees.
Not only does Larkin provide sound effects by using vowel and consonant sounds but as we scan the lines we come across different...