“THIS BE THE VERSE.”

“THIS BE THE VERSE.” Another favorite poem of mine, Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse”, is one of the bleakest poems in the language, and yet when I showed it to a group of respectable parents of grown children, it was met with gales of laughter. This is the poem :

This Be the Verse
by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

This wikipedia article says that the poem appears in its entirety on more than 1000 web pages. The article also notes the reference in the title to “Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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