“Next, Please”

-Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin was born on 9th August 1922 in Coventry Warwickshire. He is the most
significant poet to emerge in the 1950s. His writing is a repudiation of the obscure and cerebral
verse of his predecessors in the modernist poetry like Eliot, Pound and Auden. The most
important of the “Movement” poets who sought to resuscitate in English poetry the virtues of
intelligence and intelligibility, in his poems Larkin presents himself in the role of a skeptical,
astringent observer of contemporary life, His verse is noteworthy for its virtues of lyrical
consciousness, its sensitivity, its honesty, its clarity and its bold imagery. Even if he refutes the
anonymity and ambiguity of his contemporaries, Larkin’s poetry too carries the agonies and
anxieties of modernism. The North Ship published in 1945, his first collection of poems, bears
significant traces of Yeatsian influence. The Less deceived (1955), The Whitsun Wedding
(19560 and High Windows (1974) are his other major works.
The Poem:
Next, Please

Always too eager for the future, we

Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear

Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks

Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,
Flagged, and the figurehead wit golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload

All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-

Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.
Analysis
The agonies and anxieties of modernism is a visible presence in the poems of Philip
Larkin. Most of his poems are sardonic sarcastic and often cynical about the progresses and
tangible changes in the materialistic and spiritual domains of modern life. The poem “Next
Please” carries a pessimistic tone right from the beginning and it admonishes his fellow beings
for disregarding the present as well as for their impatient and worthless waiting for the vain
future. “Next, Please” is a dreary reflection on the diminishing life and the inevitability of the
bordering death. He argues that people spend too long fixated on the future, forgetting to live in
the present. In an incredibly depressing poem, Larkin implores the reader to focus on the present,
before it’s too late.
Significance of Title
The title of the poem itself is so significant since it reflects on the haste and hurry of the
people to live in the future rather relishes the present. The imperative “next” effectively
encapsulates the sense of urgency the people feel in their daily routines of life. They seem
restless, and the same impatience prevent them from the complete experience of various things
come to their life and they demand for the “next”. In this poem ‘Next’ signifies the future, with
the demand for its arrival suggesting a precarious neglect of the present. “Next Please”? Sounds
like a shop or doctor’s waiting room and the references to death in the last stanza hint at the
answer. This is Death calling!
Philip Larkin's poem, “Next, Please”, is a direct look at the folly of expectancy. The
modern man is too eager to see and experience the future that is approaching. The poet ridicules
and contemns our attitude to turn face against the vitality of the present and waste time by
thinking about the slow approach of future. Within the first line, Larkin uses the pronoun ‘we’ to
give a collective representation of the reader and those about which he is talking. Larkin believes
that all people, reader included, have this obsession with what the future will bring. The use of
enjambment, ‘every day/ Till then’, suggest closeness between the present and future. Yet, the
line break actually serves to drive apart the two concepts. ‘Till’, on a new line, is highlighted.
The far off impossibility of the future is signified through the ambiguous word. Larkin’s use of
enjambment suggests that the future is not close at all, time waiting for its arrival is time wasted.
The Poem takes the form of a parable as the poet grasps the arm of the reader and looks
out to sea. Life's events are seen as a line of approaching ships, “the sparkling armada of
promises” is long awaited but ready to unload their cargoes into the lives of poet and reader.
In the third stanza the poem turns melancholic as the poet expresses his depression and
dejection for the deception “we” have had. The enchanting but deceitful “ship” with cargoes full
of gifts has left us wretched. Larkin uses negative semantics, ‘wretched’, ‘disappointment’,
’never’ to describe the bitter realisation of ‘we’ that what they have been waiting for has eluded
them, the ship of time has left us, desolated and deserted “no sooner present than it turns to past”.
Larkin suggests that time slips through your fingers if you are constantly fixated on the future.
Larkin warns us of the over- romanticisation of the unknown future is deadly, as it draws
our attention from the everyday realities of the present. Larkin paints a beautiful picture of the
nearing ships, representing the glorious future. ‘Golden tits’ suggests wealth, but is also
sexualisation of the future – romanticised right up until the end of its approach.
The last two stanzas give a moral conclusion to the poem. The lesson or the moral we
take from this parable is that however distinct, these vessels and their cargoes are illusory. Yet
we deserve all that they do not bring, the poet says. They owe us because we have waited: we
should be rewarded for our patience. In the event, of course, there is no such thing as reward.
The double use of so: ‘so devoutly’, ‘so long’ signifies the problem in focusing on the future.
The ‘we’ in the poem spends ‘so’ much time venerating the future they forgot to think about the
present. A whole lifetime wasted by waiting and waiting for something that never came.
The poem turns more somber and dark towards the end as it depicts the harsh reality of
life – the inevitability of death. At this point in the poem, the extended metaphor of ship that
once carried the cargos of promises is subverted into one describing death. While “we” have
been waiting for the “sparkling armada” of the future, the only thing that has been getting closer
is ‘one ship’ – the ‘black-sailed’ figure of death. In this poem Philip Larkin is criticizing the
tendency of people to always look to the future while neglecting the present. Larkin points out
that we have a multiplicity of hopes, that spring eternal, many of which change to expectation
and even anticipation. The hopes are all promises made by no-one, merely assumed by ourselves,
so approach like ships towards a harbor. But then they do not dock, they keep going past for they
were not promised to us but thinking made it so, and the facts burst on us and leave us just the
stalks without the expected flowers.
The only thing certain in life is death. Whatever your hopes may be, the only thing you
can really expect is death. Religions may o0ffer you other well-delineated ("every rope") hopes
for after death, but these are promises just as airy as the ones we made for ourselves, and only
death can be guaranteed actually to come, and with nothing in its wake. Like in his other poems
Larkin continues his sardonic tone in this poem also. The depressive and pessimistic mood which
is a defining trait of modernist poetry is obvious in this poem