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This be the verse lip sync elizabeth jennings reading her poem in the night
"This Be The Verse" is a lyric poem in three verses of four iambic tetrameter on an alternating rhyme scheme, by the English poet Philip Larkin (1922–1985). It was written around April 1971, first published in the August 1971 issue of New Humanist, and appeared in the 1974 collection High Windows.
Contents
- This be the verse lip sync elizabeth jennings reading her poem in the night
- Ya se fueron this be the verse
- Enduring appeal
- References
It is one of Larkin's best-known poems; the opening lines ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad") are among his most frequently quoted. Larkin himself compared it with W. B. Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and said he expected to hear it recited in his honour by a thousand Girl Guides before he died. It is frequently parodied. Television viewers in the United Kingdom voted it one of the "Nation's Top 100 Poems".
Ya se fueron this be the verse
Enduring appeal
A testament to the enduring appeal of Larkin's poem came in April 2009, when the first four lines were recited by a British appeal court judge as part of his judgement of a particularly acrimonious divorce case involving the future custody arrangements of a nine-year-old child. Lord Justice Wall referred to the emotional damage caused to the child, saying: "These four lines seem to me to give a clear warning to parents who, post-separation, continue to fight the battles of the past, and show each other no respect."
Indeed, it is quoted on occasions by people who do not know they are quoting Larkin. It is brief and memorable enough that many who read it are then able to recite it from memory, and do so to others, who also remember it and recite it again with minor variations. It has been heard on the lips of adolescents who do not know who Larkin was. As such, the poem shows signs of having entered the folklore process of oral tradition, and may be on its way to becoming an underground nursery rhyme of sorts, after the manner of Pounds, Shillings, and Pence.
The title of the poem is an allusion to Robert Louis Stevenson's Requiem, which also contains familiar lines:
Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, 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.Stevenson's thought of a happy homecoming in death is given an ironic turn.