'Love Songs in Age' first impressions.

First impressions on 'Love Songs in Age' by Philip Larkin.

Summary and very brief analysis.

'Love Songs in Age' is about 'her', who I assume is Larkin's mother, coming across music sheets that have been left lying around untouched until that one day that she decides to relearn the music on the music sheet. Memories of her youth are then triggered as the widow plays "each frank submissive chord". As she continues to play the music this seems to give her control and although the mother cannot control what has happened in the past, she can control the music and the rhythm at which it is played. 

The listing device that is used in stanza one shows the sentiment that the song has as each one seems to back back a memory: "One marked in circles...One mended...And coloured, by her daughter, till, in widowhood She found them". Larkin personifies the sheet of music to show that the widow was meant to come across the sheet of music, as if that moment was its destiny eventhough it was accidental. 

In the second stanza, there is a sense of re-birth and the past coming back to life as she continues to play each note. It's not the past in general that comes back to life but it is her youth that she is re-living through the music. This idea of her youth being revisited is conveyed when Larkin writes about "unfailing sense of being young" and "that hidden freshness" that she has not felt since she was young. 

This piece of music may well be a love song either written for her or by her during her youth. I say that it is a love song because love could be seen by some, as something that makes us feel young and it is the thing that most memories in life stem from. 

In the third and final stanza of the poem, we see a false hope and potential that the music is expected to bring as it is "still promising to solve, and satisfy". A sense of mortality is also depicted in this poem as something is waiting to happen - maybe someone else for her to love in her life as she did when she was young. However, the message at the end of the poem contradicts her happiness during her youth and "It had not done so then, and could not now". This refers to how love promises so much but fails to deliver its promises. The poem as a whole shows how attitudes change over time as we grow old. Also, although people can love unconditionally, time is very limited and so the poem is also saying that we should be conscious about the things and people we truly love in life because life is short as "That certainty of time is laid up in store". 

First impressions.

Again this is another poem by Larkin that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and studying in Literature. Having studied previous Larkin poems where he is skeptical about life, I did get the impression that Larkin did have something good to say about love and life after all. However, that impression that I first got didn't go any further as I soon realized that Larkin believed that love does not satisfy or solve your problems in life. It didn't really surprise or shock me when Larkin ended the poem the way he did, in fact I would've been more surprised if Larkin decided to end 'Love Songs in Age' having a very positive view on love as I feel would like that wouldn't be Larkin. 

It seems to me, that it is one of Larkin's habits to end his poems with a philosophical thought and it definitely is something that really does bring the whole poem into perspective as well as other poems that I have studied. Personally, I think Larkin really has a very creative way of putting words together so things are seen from a certain perspective and in different lights.