AI ToolsNew
Tools to make learning and teaching easier
Question about this poem?
Have a question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
Ask us
Ask us
Ask a question
Ask a question
Ask a question
-
“Church Going” Introduction
-
First published in The Less Deceived in 1955, "Church Going" remains one of Philip Larkin's best-known poems. Its speaker casually visits an empty church, a place he views with skeptical irreverence. Nevertheless, the speaker admits that he's drawn to churches and speculates about what will become of them once religion itself has completely died out. Though he sees no future for the beliefs that churches promote, the speaker suggests that people will always need some version of the atmosphere they provide: one of human togetherness and "serious" contemplation of life and death. The pun in the title hints at the poem's themes: the speaker believes that churches are going as in vanishing, but that some form of "churchgoing" will survive.
-
-
“Church Going” Summary
-
As soon as I'm positive that there's nothing happening inside the building, I enter and let the door close loudly behind me. I'm visiting yet another church: one with floor mats, pews, and stone architecture; displays of cut flowers that were laid out for Sunday services and are starting to brown; some brass objects and the like up near the altar; the trim little pipe organ; and an uncomfortable, stale-smelling, distracting silence, which has been settled here for ages. Since I don't have a hat to take off, I remove my bicycle clips as an awkward way of showing respect.
I move further inside and touch the rim of the special vessel for holy water. The church roof looks almost new from my vantage point, and I wonder if was recently cleaned or totally restored. I'm sure someone could answer that question, but I can't. Stepping up to the pulpit, I browse a few imposing, moralistic biblical verses and read out the words "Here endeth" with more volume than I'd anticipated. The sound of my voice echoing through the church briefly seems to mock me. Heading back out the front door, I sign the church's guestbook, drop a small Irish coin into the donation box, and think that it wasn't worth taking the time to go in.
And yet, that's exactly what I did; in fact, I stop by churches all the time. Each time I do, I end up feeling this same kind of uncertainty, wondering what I should be trying to find—and wondering what society will do with churches once people completely stop attending them. I wonder whether we'll leave a few of the grander ones around as tourist attractions—with their holy documents, ceremonial plateware, and vessels for the Eucharist locked up in cases—and just let the others get taken over by sheep and the elements (i.e., let them decay). Will we steer clear of those churches, believing they bring bad luck?
Or will shady women visit them after dark to make their kids touch a certain stone for luck, pick herbs that are supposed to heal cancer, or wait around on some specific night they've been told that a ghost will show up? The power of the churches will endure in some form, in games, riddles, or other random-seeming ways. But superstition, like religious belief, has to end at some point—and what will be left of churches when even the need for active disbelief has ended? Just the grass, pavement with weeds poking through, prickly vines, some bits of the old buildings, and the sky above.
The decaying church's shape will be harder to recognize over time, its purpose harder to remember. I wonder who will be the absolute last person to seek this church out as a church. One of the history buffs who touch things curiously and jot notes and know what "rood-lofts" and other obscure parts of the church were? Someone who's hooked on visiting old ruins because they crave antique artifacts? Someone who loves Christmastime and hopes to catch a whiff of clerical garments, organ pipes, and fragrant incense?
Or will he be someone like me: bored, ignorant when it comes to religion, knowing that the church has no supernatural aura, yet gravitating past suburban shrubbery toward this spot because it held together—so long and so calmly—things that now exist only in scattered form? For example, marriage, birth, death, and thoughts of all these things—the very things this special container (the church) was built to hold? Because while I don't know what this decorated, stale-smelling, barn-like building is worth, I like quietly standing here.
This church is a serious and meaningful place, built on meaningful ground. Inside it, all our combined human instincts are acknowledged and dignified as fate. And that aspect of it, at least, can never die out, since someone, somewhere, will always discover in themselves a desire to grow more serious. And that desire will always lead them toward this spot, which they once heard was an appropriate place to seek wisdom—if only because it's surrounded by so many dead people.
-
-
“Church Going” Themes
-
The Role of Religion in Society
"Church Going" is a meditation on how society will (and won't) change when religion no longer holds any place in it. The speaker, a skeptic who visits a church while biking through the countryside, assumes that religion is dying and churches are sliding into irrelevance. Yet as he tries to imagine the fate of churches in a future without any religion at all, he decides that even non-believers like himself will still find some kind of power in what these buildings represented. Though old doctrines will fade, the poem suggests, some people will always seek out the "serious," ceremonious attitude that religion took toward life and death, because it's part of human nature to search for purpose and meaning.
The speaker visits an empty church despite being a non-believer, and his behavior in this setting shows a mix of respectful fascination and irreverence. He stops by as if on a whim, while cycling through the countryside, yet also admits that he does this "often." He removes "[his] cycle-clips in awkward reverence," a comic detail suggesting that he's not sure how to act in this setting, but feels some instinct toward respect even as a non-believer. He clowns around a bit in the empty church, but also leaves a donation—though it's essentially worthless. He describes his attitude toward the church as "Bored, uninformed," and well aware that the place holds no "ghostly" aura. His actions, however, reveal ambivalence: even in his skepticism, he's drawn to the place.
The speaker's combined interest in and rejection of the church leads him to imagine a future in which religion has vanished, yet churches themselves still hold a peculiar appeal. In asking "When churches fall completely out of use / What we shall turn them into," he assumes that this change will happen: he's a modern skeptic who views religion as archaic and dying. He speculates about a future in which "belief," "superstition," and even "disbelief" are gone—that is, in which religion no longer holds any claim on human society, even as a rejected idea. Even then, however, he suggests that people like himself will still find power in the mere atmosphere of the church, which they may go so far as to seek out in defunct, decaying houses of worship.
Ultimately, the speaker identifies the primary power of the church (or religion) as its "serious[ness]," suggesting that this aspect will endure even after all the church's doctrines, rituals, and physical structures have crumbled. He admits that, for all his religious skepticism, he likes visiting the church because it's a "serious house on serious earth." That is, it's devoted to solemn respect for matters of life and death that may be trivialized elsewhere.
Though he does think that churches and organized religion will die out, he also sympathizes with their serious purpose and believes that some people will always share this sympathy. Thus, he asserts that this aspect of religious life "never can be obsolete," even as all others fade. Even unused churches will still draw some people, if only because their proximity to death (graveyards) makes them seem natural places to ponder the meaning of life.
While "Church Going" is sometimes irreverent in tone, it takes churches, and the human needs they're supposed to serve, very seriously. Though it never tips toward actual religious belief, it assumes that those needs will live on even as churches die out and thoughtfully considers how society will respond.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-63
-
The Desire for Human Connection
The speaker suggests that churches, besides offering a "serious" atmosphere, once played a vital role in uniting communities. While this communal spirit has largely deteriorated, according to the speaker, its lingering memory still attracts even skeptics. Though he himself (ironically) visits churches only when they're empty, he finds their communal purpose part of their appeal. "Church Going" concludes that, if nothing else, churches remain ideal places to contemplate what all human beings share in common, including their mortality.
The speaker's visit to the church suggests both an avoidance of and a subtle hunger for the company of others. He stops inside only "Once I am sure there’s nothing going on"—that is, once he's sure the place is empty. Yet he immediately removes his cycle-clips as if in a social gesture of respect, thinks of a question "Someone" could answer if they were around, and half-jokingly reads from the lectern as if to an actual congregation. He also donates a small coin and signs the church's guestbook: subtle gestures of community.
In the end, the speaker acknowledges that people have long gone to churches precisely for this sense of community. He predicts that, even after religions have dispersed, people will seek out former sites of worship in order to contemplate their connection with the rest of humanity. He admits that churches appeal to him because they once brought communities together to honor marriage, birth, and other events now "found only in separation." He depicts them as unifying, equalizing places where "all our compulsions meet" and "are recognized" as part of a common humanity. As long as churches exist in some form, he argues, people will seek out this communal atmosphere—if only by visiting the graveyards around them and contemplating our shared fragility.
Just as the poem reflects a tension between respect and irreverence, it reflects a tension between the desire for solitary contemplation and the desire for belonging. The speaker doesn't want to join a church, but he finds churches productive sites for thinking about what unites all people. He believes that this impulse toward connection will survive organized religion.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 8-18
- Lines 43-63
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Church Going”
-
Lines 1-2
Once I am ...
... door thud shut.The poem begins with a punning title. "Church Going" literally means the practice of attending church (usually spelled as one word, churchgoing), but as the poem soon makes clear, it also suggests "the disappearing church" (as in, the church is "going" away, or becoming obsolete). The speaker, it turns out, is a non-religious person who believes that churches and organized religion are dying out in a secular age. Nevertheless, he has a habit of visiting old churches, for reasons that he tries to explain or work out in the poem.
In these first two lines, he walks into one such church: "Once I am sure there's nothing going on / I step inside, letting the door thud shut." This is clearly not churchgoing in the traditional sense, then: churchgoers worship as members of a congregation, but this speaker goes out of his way to make sure no formal events are happening—and no one else is around—before dropping in. He wants to find solitude in the church itself, not congregate with others.
In the overall context of the poem, "nothing going on" could have other possible meanings as well. For example, the speaker seems "sure there's nothing going on" with churches and religion in a larger sense: that is, they're drained of traditional meaning and fast becoming irrelevant. But the poem also contradicts that idea to some degree: for the speaker, something clearly is "going on" in the church, a meaningful experience that he repeatedly seeks out even if it isn't social or supernatural in nature.
These opening lines establish the poem's meter as iambic pentameter. This means that a typical line in the poem contains five iambs: metrical feet consisting of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. The baseline rhythm of the lines, then, is "da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM"—but there are many variations from this pattern. Listen to the stresses in lines 1-2:
Once I | am sure | there's no- | thing go- | ing on
I step | inside, | letting | the door | thud shut.Line 1 follows the pattern closely, except for one extremely common variation: the substitution of a trochee (stressed-unstressed) for an iamb (unstressed-stressed) in the first foot ("Once I"). Line 2 is a bit more irregular, substituting a trochee for an iamb in the third foot ("letting") and a spondee (stressed-stressed) for an iamb in the final foot ("thud shut").
These changes make the line sound slightly awkward, evoking the speaker's hesitancy and tentativeness as he steps inside the church. The two stressed beats of "thud shut," meanwhile end with an emphatic bang (like the church door slamming shut!). The assonance in the last two words—"thud shut"—adds a bit of "thud[ding]" emphasis as well.
-
Lines 3-8
Another church: matting, ...
... knows how long.
Unlock all 479 words of this analysis of Lines 3-8 of “Church Going,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Lines 8-12
Hatless, I take ...
... know: I don't. -
Lines 13-16
Mounting the lectern, ...
... echoes snigger briefly. -
Lines 16-18
Back at the ...
... worth stopping for. -
Lines 19-23
Yet stop I ...
... turn them into, -
Lines 23-27
if we shall ...
... as unlucky places? -
Lines 28-31
Or, after dark, ...
... a dead one? -
Lines 32-35
Power of some ...
... disbelief has gone? -
Lines 36-38
Grass, weedy pavement, ...
... purpose more obscure. -
Lines 38-41
I wonder who ...
... what rood-lofts were? -
Lines 42-44
Some ruin-bibber, randy ...
... organ-pipes and myrrh? -
Lines 45-48
Or will he ...
... Through suburb scrub -
Lines 48-52
because it held ...
... This special shell? -
Lines 52-54
For, though I've ...
... in silence here; -
Lines 55-58
A serious house ...
... can be obsolete, -
Lines 59-63
Since someone will ...
... dead lie round.
-
-
“Church Going” Symbols
-
The Speaker and the Church
The speaker's treatment of the church symbolizes his attitude toward religion itself. His actions in the first two stanzas, especially, suggest that this attitude hovers between irreverence and respect.
He enters the church only once he's "sure there's nothing going on"; that is, he doesn't seem to want to be part of any official religious service or community. He removes his cycle-clips "in awkward reverence," feeling he ought to show respect but not sure how to do it. (And to whom is he trying to show respect? The people who aren't there, or the divine presence he doesn't believe in?) With playful irreverence, he reads aloud from the Bible at the pulpit, but seems embarrassed by the resulting echoes. He signs the church's guestbook in a small gesture of community and respect. He also donates a coin, albeit a small one, which (depending on whether the church is located in or outside of Ireland) may or may not have any value at all.
In other words, the speaker's behavior is a bit all over the map, reflecting his mixed feelings toward religion. He doesn't subscribe to any fundamental religious beliefs, but he's drawn to—and "please[d]" by—the communal, ceremonious atmosphere that religious worship offers. He feels some respect for religion, but he isn't sure where or how to direct that respect, and he doesn't feel deference or obedience to it (he's willing to make fun of it).
The donated coin seems to symbolize what religion is worth to the speaker, though the symbolism here is ambiguous. Clearly, religion doesn't hold much (if any) definable value for him, but it may hold a little. Even if the coin is worthless, his donation suggests some lingering desire for religion to hold value (i.e., he feels he ought to donate even if he doesn't really believe).
If nothing else, the speaker likes to "stand in silence" in the church. This detail may symbolize the silence (i.e., absence) of God, but it's also a contemplative silence: a thought-provoking atmosphere that the speaker likes to absorb. Symbolically, then, religion doesn't speak to him in any traditional way, but he still finds it meaningful and rewarding to contemplate.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-18: “Once I am sure there's nothing going on / I step inside, letting the door thud shut. / Another church: matting, seats, and stone, / And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut / For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff / Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; / And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, / Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off / My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, / Move forward, run my hand around the font. / From where I stand, the roof looks almost new— / Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't. / Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few / Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce / "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant. / The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door / I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, / Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.”
- Lines 52-54: “For, though I've no idea / What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, / It pleases me to stand in silence here;”
-
Religious Artifacts
The poem describes items in the church (and religious artifacts in general) in blunt, flippant terms. These artifacts come to symbolize the meaninglessness of religious structures and trappings in the absence of religious belief.
To the non-religious speaker, the church is just "Another church," not a unique and sacred place to which he feels personal or communal ties. The Bibles and hymnals in the pews are just "little books"—not sacred texts—while the grand decorations at the altar are just "some brass and stuff / Up at the holy end." The silence strikes him as "tense" and "musty" rather than hallowed, awe-inspiring, etc. (although he later admits he finds it "pleas[ing]").
The speaker also imagines cathedrals being repurposed as tourist attractions, with artifacts such as "parchment, plate, and pyx" kept "in locked cases" like museum pieces. This image implies that religion is becoming obsolete, draining its once-venerated objects of prestige and relevance. Even in praising the church toward the end, the speaker describes it as an "accoutred frowsty barn": that is, a stale, barn-like building filled with accoutrements, or mere decorative stuff. In the absence of any broader belief to infuse the place with meaning, the church might as well be a giant, tricked-out shed.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 3-8: “Another church: matting, seats, and stone, / And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut / For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff / Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; / And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, / Brewed God knows how long.”
- Lines 10-16: “Move forward, run my hand around the font. / From where I stand, the roof looks almost new— / Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't. / Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few / Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce / "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant. / The echoes snigger briefly.”
- Lines 22-25: “When churches fall completely out of use / What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep / A few cathedrals chronically on show, / Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,”
- Lines 52-53: “For, though I've no idea / What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,”
-
-
“Church Going” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Metaphor
"Church Going" uses a number of metaphors as it describes the church and imagines the future of churches. These metaphors help to make the poem all the more vivid for the readers. For example, the speaker says that the "silence" of the church (line 7) has been "Brewed God knows how long" (line 8), as if it's a liquid that's been sitting, stagnant, in the vessel of the church. Later, the echoes in line 16 are said to "snigger briefly," as if they're snickering at or mocking the speaker rather than just rebounding off the walls.
There are lots of other metaphors as well, which tend to cast the church (as well as churchgoers) in an irreverent light:
- Line 42 imagines a "ruin-bibber, randy for antique": someone who loves ruins and antiques so much that it's as if they're addicted to them (like a bibber, a.k.a. drunkard) or lustful (randy) for them. Similarly, lines 43-44 describe a "Christmas-addict": someone who loves the holiday so much that, figuratively speaking, they're jonesing for even a "whiff" of Christmas spirit.
- Lines 46-47 compare the supernatural aura of the church to "ghostly silt" (silt meaning sediment or another sort of residue) that's "Dispersed" as the world has grown more secular. Line 47 also compares the site of the church to a "cross of ground" (think of the phrase X marks the spot), which, of course, puns on the Christian cross.
- Line 53 ("this accoutred frowsty barn") irreverently compares the church to a musty, but decorated, barn. This comparison suggests that the building is large, stale-smelling, full of open space, etc., and frames it as humble rather than grand.
- Lines 56-57 describe the "blent air" of the church, in which "all our compulsions meet, / Are recognised, and robed as destinies." Again, the speaker compares the air to a liquid that's been brewed (blent), this time imagining its ingredients as all our human compulsions (instincts, tendencies). According to the speaker, the church once "robed" these compulsions as "destines"—metaphorically dressed them up or glamorized them as the workings of fate.
But certain metaphors in the final two stanzas grant the place some dignity as well. For example, Lines 48-53 compare the church to a "special shell" that "held unspilt" various social forces and experiences until they began to scatter in a secular age. In other words, the church was a kind of container for religious ceremonies like marriage, birth, and death (and the emotions that accompany such ceremonies), keeping these things from metaphorically spilling out into the secular world.
Where metaphor appears in the poem:- Lines 7-8: “And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, / Brewed God knows how long.”
- Line 16: “The echoes snigger briefly.”
- Line 42: “Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,”
- Lines 43-44: “Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff / Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?”
- Lines 46-47: “knowing the ghostly silt / Dispersed”
- Line 47: “this cross of ground”
- Lines 48-52: “it held unspilt / So long and equably what since is found / Only in separation—marriage, and birth, / And death, and thoughts of these—for whom was built / This special shell?”
- Line 53: “this accoutred frowsty barn”
- Line 56: “In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,”
- Line 57: “robed as destinies.”
-
Imagery
Unlock all 361 words of this analysis of Imagery in “Church Going,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Repetition
-
Alliteration
-
Assonance
-
Parallelism
-
Asyndeton
-
Irony
-
Allusion
-
Rhetorical Question
-
-
“Church Going” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Matting
- Sprawlings
- Cycle-clips
- Font
- Mounting
- Lectern
- Peruse
- Hectoring
- Snigger
- Irish sixpence
- Pyx
- Plate
- Parchment
- Let
- Dubious
- Simples
- Advised
- Brambles
- Buttress
- Tap
- Rood-lofts
- Jot
- Ruin-bibber
- Randy
- Antique
- Myrrh
- Gown-and-bands
- Silt
- Tending
- Scrub
- Equably
- Unspilt
- Accoutred
- Frowsty
- Blent
- Compulsions
- Robed
- Surprising
Matting-
(Location in poem: Line 3: “Another church: matting, seats, and stone,”)
Material used for floor mats, such as straw, rope, etc.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Church Going”
-
Form
The poem consists of seven stanzas of nine lines each.
Nine-line stanzas are relatively rare in English poetry. One precedent is the Spenserian stanza, which the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser developed for his 1590-'96 epic The Faerie Queene. The Spenserian stanza rhymes a bit differently than Larkin's poem, however. And while the meter of Larkin's poem is iambic pentameter (meaning that its lines generally contain ten syllables arranged in an unstressed-stressed (da-DUM, da-DUM) pattern, the final line of a Spenserian stanza is written in iambic hexameter (meaning there's a sixth iamb, for a total of 12 syllables).
Otherwise, Spenserian stanzas do pretty closely resemble the form of "Church Going." The Faerie Queene is a religious allegory as well as a national epic about England, so if Larkin's form is an allusion to this older, traditionally religious poem, it carries a lot of irony!
The poem's combination of consistent form and occasionally rough meter (as well as surprising rhymes such as "surprising"/"wise in") allows for a mix of stability and disruption—or "traditional" formality and "modern" playfulness. In other words, it suits the tone and subject of this poem, which both confronts the crumbling of old traditions and wonders what can be salvaged from them.
-
Meter
The poem is written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line generally contains five iambs, or metrical feet consisting of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM), for a total of 10 syllables per line. Line 11, for example, follows this pattern perfectly:
From where | I stand, | the roof | looks al- | most new—
The poem includes many small variations on this basic rhythm, however. Readers can hear a few in the first two lines:
Once I | am sure | there's no- | thing go- | ing on
I step | inside, | letting | the door | thud shut.There's a trochee (stressed-unstressed) rather than an iamb in the first foot of line 1 (a very common variation). Line 2 contains a trochee in the third foot ("letting") and a spondee (stressed-stressed; "thud shut") in the fifth foot, which makes the line about the "thudding" door seem to thud to a close.
Such variations occur frequently in the poem. The meter isn't dramatically inconsistent, but it's a mix of stately rhythms (especially in the final stanza) and casual roughness. This middle ground seems to suit the tone and themes of the poem, whose speaker doesn't adhere strictly to old traditions but retains a certain respect for and curiosity about them. You could say that the poem's attitude toward meter is formal, but not too formal!
-
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of each nine-line stanza is as follows:
ABABCADCD
This scheme is like two quatrains (rhyming ABAB and CDCD) combined, with an extra (A-rhymed) line inserted as the sixth line of each stanza. Many of the poem's rhymes are full rhymes (e.g., "new"/"few"), but others are slant or imperfect (e.g., "font"/"don't"/"meant" or "surprising"/"wise in"), introducing some flexibility and playfulness (or irreverence!) into an otherwise strict pattern.
This unusual structure makes each stanza a bit weightier than the (much more common) octave, or eight-line stanza. The extra A-rhyme also marks a "throwback" to the first half of the stanza, perhaps paralleling the "throwback" themes of the poem itself. (In other words, there's an element of the rhyme scheme that looks backward even as the rest moves forward, much as the speaker is a modern, forward-looking skeptic who nevertheless pauses to reflect on what past traditions offered.)
The nine-line stanza form also loosely recalls the Spenserian stanza (found in Edmund Spenser's 1590-'96 epic The Faerie Queene), which rhymes a bit differently: ABABBCBCC. Overall, then, Larkin's rhyme scheme contains both antique and novel elements and evokes some of the "serious[ness]" the speaker admires in the church—while sometimes subverting that seriousness as well.
-
-
“Church Going” Speaker
-
The speaker is a non-religious person (an atheist, agnostic, or skeptic) who nevertheless visits churches "often." He seems to have visited this one impulsively while cycling; he still has his "cycle-clips" on when he enters, and he's just "stopping" by, not visiting the church as his main destination. (The poem never states the speaker's gender, but it refers to "my representative"—an imagined person just like the speaker—as "he," so this guide uses masculine pronouns to refer to the speaker as well.)
The poem doesn't explicitly equate the speaker with the poet, but many readers and critics have done so, and Larkin himself indicated in interviews that the poem drew on his actual experience. ("Church Going" became part of his popular image as a writer; in this documentary footage filmed after the poem's publication, you can see Larkin cycling and visiting a church.)
The speaker visits this church, and others, more or less as a tourist, not as a spiritual seeker or member of a congregation. In fact, he tries to avoid others on site; he steps inside only "Once I am sure there's nothing going on" in the building. His preference for empty churches has several possible meanings. On the one hand, it reflects a certain discomfort with religious rituals and ceremonies, as well as a skeptical sense that religion itself is empty of meaning. On the other hand, it suggests that meaning, purpose, and even belief (however he defines it) are private matters for the speaker. Rather than a site of communal worship, he prefers to use the church as a place of quiet, solitary contemplation: to "stand in silence here."
The speaker has an irreverent, self-deprecating sense of humor, and not everything he says should be taken as gospel truth (so to speak). For example, he describes himself—or someone just like him—as "Bored" by and "uninformed" about churches. This is true to some extent; he doesn't stay long when he visits, and he can't evaluate things like the roof in lines 11-12 ("Someone would know: I don't"). But in other ways, it's clearly untrue: churches interest him enough that he visits them "often"—and he's written this whole meditation about them! He also seems much more informed than he lets on; for example, he knows some obscure church-related terms, such as "pyx" and "rood-lofts."
Overall, the speaker seems to have mixed feelings about the church (and, by extension, religion and belief in general). He predicts that churches will die out—at least in their current form—but maintains that their "serious" atmosphere appeals to him. Beyond that, his attitude is hard to pin down. This ambiguity is deliberate: the poem springs from the speaker's (or poet's) uncertainty as to what the church means to him, and what it might mean (or not mean) to people ages from now.
-
-
“Church Going” Setting
-
The setting is an empty church, apparently located amid the "suburb scrub" (humble suburban landscape) through which the speaker has been cycling. The speaker has no personal connection to this church; he's just visiting out of curiosity and/or to take a break from the road. Since "there's nothing going on" in the church, the speaker is visiting either in the hours after Sunday services or on a day other than Sunday. In fact, the flowers "cut / For Sunday" services have already turned "brownish."
Larkin once claimed that the poem was originally inspired by a defunct, ruined church in the Irish countryside, but he also reported that he visited churches often on his bike rides and has suggested that the poem was informed by this general habit. The church in "Church Going" is clearly still active ("[I]t wasn't [ruined] in the poem," Larkin acknowledged). Its roof looks "Cleaned, or restored," and it's still hosting Sunday services. However, its "musty" smell suggests decline, informing the speaker's portrayal of religion as archaic and losing relevance.
The details in the poem don't tie the church to a particular location or denomination. The "Irish sixpence" the speaker donates suggests that the church stands somewhere in the British isles, but whether it's in Ireland or Great Britain (both places Larkin lived) has been a matter of critical debate:
- One critic, John Osborne, called an Irish sixpence "the three most hotly contested words" in Larkin's entire body of work!
- Depending on whether the church is Irish or English, the coin might have small value or no value at all and thus could signal either slight respect for or dismissive cynicism toward religion.
- Depending on whether the church is Protestant or Catholic, and whether the speaker himself is English or Irish, the donation might also have political significance. (For example, as Osborne suggests, if the speaker is a person of Irish heritage donating an Irish coin in an English Protestant church, the gesture "combines religious unbelief with a hint of political disaffiliation from the UK.") But Larkin's own comment in a letter—"The Irish [sixpence] was meant as a comic compromise between GIVING NOTHING and giving REAL MONEY"—suggests that the church is probably in England, where the coin was valueless.
Regardless of its exact location, the setting is one of the many country or parish churches that dot the landscape of Great Britain and Ireland. The references to "brass," "organ," and "myrrh" (used in incense) suggest a fairly "high church" setting, but one that could be either Catholic or Protestant.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Church Going”
- For example, the speaker of the poem "In the Cathedral," by Louis MacNeice (a well-known Irish poet of Larkin's period), donates "sixpence" to a cathedral much as Larkin's speaker donates to the church.
- The term "serious earth" (line 55) seems to parallel a similar phrase, "significant soil," from T. S. Eliot's landmark poem Four Quartets (1943).
Literary Context
"Church Going" (1955) grew out of Philip Larkin's personal experience, as he once told the poet John Betjeman in an interview:
I had rather fallen into the habit of going out cycling on Sundays [...] And whenever I saw a church, I used to stop and look inside. It was a nice excuse for stopping. But I liked going into them. I know very little about them, but I always welcomed the feeling I had going into a church. And in the end, I began to try to write about it.
Larkin was a lifelong religious skeptic, as his poetry often indicates. His poem "Faith Healing," for example, is a largely (though not entirely) scathing portrayal of evangelical Christianity, while "Aubade" calls religion a "vast moth-eaten musical brocade / Created to pretend we never die." His skepticism is gentler in "Church Going," but it's still very present: he once suggested that the poem was popular "because it is about religion, and has a serious air that conceals the fact that its tone and argument are entirely secular."
The poem doesn't make any explicit literary allusions, except to the general faith tradition of Christianity (and the prayer book of the Church of England, which Larkin named as the source for "Here endeth" in line 15). However, critics have speculated that a few of its details might echo passages in previous poetry and literature:
Larkin himself was one of the most influential and popular British poets of the post-WWII years. The Less Deceived, in which "Church Going" initially appeared, was the first poetry collection of his mature period (and his second after The North Ship, which he published in his early 20s). Along with "Church Going," it contains several other still-popular poems, including "Toads," "Deceptions," and "I Remember, I Remember."
Critics have often grouped Larkin with the school of postwar British poets known as "The Movement," which emphasized its cultural Englishness and resistance to the experimental tendencies of modern poetry. Other writers in The Movement included Thom Gunn, Donald Davie, and Larkin's close friend Kingsley Amis.
Historical Context
Larkin wrote "Church Going" in the mid-1950s, during a period when organized religion and religious belief were on the decline in the UK. This was the period following the second of the two world wars, events that caused massive social upheaval and tested or shattered the faith of many who witnessed them. Generally, in the UK (as throughout much of Europe), the cultural predominance of the church had weakened since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the poet put it in a 1943 letter: "[N]obody gives a darn for [religion] any longer, not in England, anyway. Methodism caught on fire in the 18th century, but it’s worn thin now."
"Church Going" isn't the only Larkin poem that registers this change. For example, "High Windows" (1974) suggests that Larkin was among the first modern English generation freed from:
[...] sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest.Here, the change is portrayed as liberating. Larkin participated in and generally welcomed the trend away from organized religion. However, he also felt occasional ambivalence on the subject, including some nostalgia for the social cohesion that (in his view) religion used to offer. This attitude tinges the final two stanzas of "Church Going," with their references to what the church "held unspilt" (see lines 48-52) and to its "blent air [in which] all our compulsions meet."
-
More “Church Going” Resources
-
External Resources
-
A Biography of the Poet — Learn more about Larkin's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
-
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a recording of Philip Larkin reading "Church Going."
-
The Poet's "Agnostic Legacy" — More on Larkin's beliefs (or non-beliefs) via The Guardian.
-
A Documentary of the Poet — A 2003 Larkin documentary that begins with footage of the poet cycling up to a church.
-
Interview with the Poet — Watch poet John Betjeman interview Philip Larkin in 1964.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin
-
