This Be the Verse

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1971

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem is written in iambic tetrameter. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, and a tetrameter line comprises four poetic feet. Thus, Line 1 scans as follows: “They fuck | you up, | your mum | and dad.” Line 4 presents another example: “And add | some ex | tra, just | for you.”

Larkin makes a number of substitutions in this iambic rhythm. In Line 9, for example, the first foot is a spondee, which comprises two stressed syllables: “Man hands.” The same applies to the first foot in Line 11: “Get out.” In both cases, the spondees add emphasis to the speaker's argument in the final verse of the poem. The two end-stopped lines at the beginning of the third verse, which slow the poem down (especially when it is read out loud), also add weight and emphasis to the speaker's final point: “Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf” (Lines 9-10). (End-stopped means that the end of the line coincides with the completion of a grammatical unit—a thought or a phrase. Such a line ends with a punctuation mark, in this case a period.)

Also, the use of a caesura three times in Stanza 1 provides some variety in the rhythm, making it sound more like informal speech. A caesura is a pause, indicated by a punctuation mark, that may be placed near the beginning, in the middle, or toward the end of a poetic line. The caesura in all three cases in Stanza 1 is a comma:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

Rhyme

The poem has a consistent alternating rhyme scheme, in which the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. The majority of the rhymes are known as perfect rhymes, in which different consonants are followed by a final vowel and consonant that are identical in each rhyming line: “Dad” / “had” (Lines 1, 3); “turn” / “stern” (Lines 5, 7); “coats” / “throats” (Lines 6-8); “man” / “can” (Lines 9-11); “shelf” / “yourself” (Lines 10, 12). The rhyme scheme can be presented as ABAB.

The effect of the alternating rhyme scheme is to reinforce a thematic connection between the rhymed words. Therefore, the rhyme “shelf” / “self” implies that individuals have the power to shape their destinies, despite the colossal forces operating against them.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonants in nearby words. Larkin uses alliteration several times. “They fill you with the faults” (Line 3) repeats the “f” sound, while also recalling the word “fuck” in the first line. “[S]oppy-stern” (Line 7) repeats the “s” sound, suggesting along with the hyphenation that these two apparently contradictory or opposite qualities are in fact linked as different sides of the same coin. Finally, there is “[m]an hands on misery to man” (Line 9)—the repetition of the “m” sound in “man” and “misery” drives home the point that human life is full of unhappiness.

Allusion

The title of the poem alludes ironically to a poem titled “Requiem” by Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), which contains the phrase “This be the verse.” The theme and tone of “Requiem” is entirely different from Larkin’s poem. The speaker in “Requiem” is an adventurer who has had a rewarding, enjoyable life. He invites those who survive him to dig his grave; he will be glad to die and lie in it:

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

The implication of this allusion is that the speaker would like the text of “This Be The Verse” to serve as his epitaph, a statement of what he believed and how he lived his life. There is humor in this suggestion, and readers of Larkin’s day would have been familiar with the reference. In this way, Larkin connects his work to the canon of English poetry, if in a tongue-and-cheek way, and invokes a shared context with his readers.

Simile

A simile is a figure of speech in which a comparison is made between two ostensibly unlike things that brings out a similarity between them. A simile can often be recognized by the use of the words “as” or “like.” In the lines “Man hands on misery to man, / It deepens like a coastal shelf” (Lines 9-10), the building up of the collective misery of the human race over many generations is compared to a coastal shelf that accumulates increasing layers of sentiment over long periods of time.

The effect of this simile is to emphasize the naturalness and the inevitability of the build-up of humanity’s misery over many generations. The coastal shelf is an effective simile because it symbolizes humanity’s unity: Each grain of sand, piece of sediment, shell, or other material that accretes to the landmass makes up part of the whole. The shelf being mostly submerged and sloping gradually to the bottom of the ocean, alternating between gentle and steep inclines, conveys the unpredictable depths of human consciousness and relationships. The image evokes mystery and danger; one can walk along the coast, but its depths are unknowable. Comparing humanity’s misery to this landmass makes it a complex concept in which everyone knowingly or unknowingly plays a part.