Nothing to Be Said
Nothing to Be Said - meaning Summary
Slow Death of Ordinary Lives
Larkin’s poem depicts the quiet, gradual decline of ordinary communities and their rituals. It lists small, overlooked groups—mill-town families, nomads, cobble-close households—and notes how their ways of living, worshipping, and marking life events ‘‘slowly die.’’ The poem also points to the limited effect of saying this: for some it changes nothing, for others it leaves "nothing to be said." The tone is resigned and observational.
Read Complete AnalysesFor nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying. So are their separate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slowly dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party, Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance On death equally slowly. And saying so to some Means nothing; others it leaves Nothing to be said.
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