Toads
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losers, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
They seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually _starves_.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Commentary
My turn to contribute to the theme:
A typical Larkin poem: dry and to the point, it echoes the quiet desperation which infuses much of his work. The comparison between the two toads of the title1 - the sickening poison of the toad ‘work’, and the lack of courage of his own baser self - is not overdone at all; instead, Larkin’s matter-of-fact tone reinforces the sense he is trying to convey.
— Thomas
Assessment
” … Philip Larkin is the poet of the emotionally underprivileged. He speaks for the vast majority of people, for whom life is a series of successive disillusionments. His poetic personae are invariably unprepossessing - the man with bicycle clips on his trousers, sitting in an empty church; the outsider, looking in on the merrymaking of other people; the traveler who has (both literally and figuratively) missed the boat. Yet if we describe his subject as being ‘the short end of the stick’, all we can say is that he has a firm grasp of it; like Thomas Hardy (one of his early influences), he is an intelligent skeptic, rather than a shallow cynic or a bitter loser.
Larkin’s distaste for the spectacular extends itself to the manner of his poetry; his verse exhibits the same precision and clarity as does that of Yeats. His relatively small poetic output reflects his sense of balance and his attention to detail… “
– Gary Geddes, 20th Century Poetry and Poetics
(The above paragraphs are from memory, so they’re not verbatim. The overall sense is correct, though - t.).
-
Alliteration watch! ↩
Show 10 commentsHide comments
From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Sunil Iyengar · 11 September 2000
Hi Abraham,
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the last stanza; what do you suppose the “both” of the last line is referring to?
(I have some ideas.)
Sunil
jen · 17 April 2001
Hello,
I am studying this poem and at a loss.
I am wondering if you can point out the technical aspects, the mechanics, literary devices, and images in this poem.
Thanks, Jennifer
Michelle Egan · 6 April 2002
I think the last two lines are talking more about how if you had only had the bad work and not the fear about quitting, you could change your situation and have the freedom to do what you want. Or if you had the good luck of already having that freedom but still have lack courage, it wouldn’t matter because you would never have to change you job. However the man in the poem has both. He has job he hates and not enough courage to quit and his desire to quit is out weighed by the strenghth he has to do something about it.
99halimefarrah · 7 April 2003
what is this poem about? does anybody know? is there anybody out there? HELP!
hamerton · 2 March 2004
HI.
im studying this poem as well and i was wondering if you could help me too.i hoping that you got help from someone else. anything will be helpful…thanks
MrkPdly · 7 March 2004
What is this poem all about. I interpret it as being about someone who is working for a living and not enjoying it. Toads Revisited is another poem I need to study and I think this is about the same man once he has retired. Am I anywhere near the right track
Kate Pedley
Melek Bulut · 10 June 2004
HELP!!!!!
I am studying those poems TOAD and TOADS REVISITED by Philip Larkin. I was wondering if you could help me too. I need the mechanics, literary devices, and images in the poems. And I need to compare them, what is equal and what is different? What is the message of those poems? PLEASE HELP!! I need the answers quickly. thanks so much, melek ;o)
Mit schönen Grüßen von Yahoo! Mail. Mit dem Yahoo! Messenger können Sie Freunde noch schneller erreichen!
Julian Archer · 6 December 2004
And “my way to getting”, not “of getting”; poor old Larkinn must be turning in his grave…
Julian Archer · 6 December 2004
It’s not “losers”, it’s “losels”: look it up.
khaloua · 20 November 2007
Hello i am studying the poem and i want some ideas about it please