Maturity
Maturity - form Summary
A Sonnet's Resigned Balance
Larkin uses the sonnet’s compactness to stage a small, controlled argument about ageing. The poem sets a stable present against an anticipated physical decline, then shifts tone into a resigned acceptance. The sonnet’s constrained shape concentrates contrasts—steady selfhood versus incremental failure—and the implied turn focuses attention on the speaker’s bleak conclusion that his most effective period is entwined with its own counterfeit and defeat.
Read Complete AnalysesA stationary sense... as, I suppose, I shall have, till my single body grows Inaccurate, tired; Then I shall start to feel the backward pull Take over, sickening and masterful - Some say, desired. And this must be the prime of life... I blink, As if at pain; for it is pain, to think This pantomime Of compensating act and counter-act Defeat and counterfeit, makes up, in fact My ablest time.
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