Negative Indicative
Negative Indicative - meaning Summary
Absence and Remembered Routines
The poem lists ordinary, domestic scenes the speaker will never again experience: arriving at a station, carrying a father’s case, being shown into a modest rented room, visiting a lame girl who pours tea, and noticing the first star as the year turns. Precise sensory details build a quiet catalogue of vanished routines. The closing image of water sound broadens the loss into a larger, emblematic sense of absence and passing time.
Read Complete AnalysesNever to walk from the station's lamps and laurels Carrying my father's lean old leather case Crumbling like the register at the hotel; Never to be shown upstairs To a plain room smelling of soap, a towel Neatly hung on the back of a rush chair, The floor uneven, the grate choked with a frill, Muslin curtains hiding the market square; Never to visit the lame girl who lives three doors Down Meeting-House Lane — 'This pile is ready; these I shall finish tonight, with luck' — to watch, as she pours Tea from a gold-lined jubilee pot, her eyes, Her intelligent face; never, walking away As light fails, to notice the first star Pulsing alone in a long shell-coloured sky, And remember the year has turned, and feel the air Alive with the emblematic sound of water —
Feel free to be first to leave comment.