At Grass
• The title ‘At Grass’ means retirement.
The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
-The other seeming to look on –
And stands anonymous again.
Yet fifteen year ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
To fable them: faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes –
Silks at the start: against the sky
Numbers and parasols: outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass: then one long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.
Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowds and cries-
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies:
Only the groom, and the groom’s boy,
With bridles in the evening come.
Philip Larkin
Structure and Form
Comparative Ideas
• Larkin finds it difficult to see the horses who stand in ‘cold shade’ out of the sun.
He uses the verb ‘distresses’ to describe the wind’s effect on their manes and tails,
perhaps a pun on ‘tress’. One of the two horses ‘crops’, eats grass, moving, while
the writer speculates that the other watches this, spectating, almost an echo of their
past. When the moving horse stops he describes it as ‘anonymous’ – anonymous
now but once its name was well known.
• He tells us that ‘fifteen year ago perhaps’ twenty-four races, he calls them
‘distances’ as horse races vary in length, were enough (‘sufficed’) to ‘fable them’,
to make them into legends. The memory is ‘faint’ now, fifteen years is a long time
in racing terms. He lists three types of races that resulted in the names becoming
legendary. He uses a metaphor from craft work, their names ‘artificed to inlay
faded’ on cups and plaques.
• ‘Classic Junes’, the time of the great classic flat races, leads to an evocation of
typical race meetings, the ladies’ parasols giving the description a dated, nostalgic
air. In the car park wait ‘squadrons’ of cars, a military metaphor to express their
number. It is hot and the grass is ‘littered’, also showing the number of race-goers.
He goes then to the end of the race, ‘the long cry’ of triumph or disappointment or
admiration seeming to ‘hang’ in the air and then to be reflected in the urgent racing
pages of the newspapers.
• He opens the fourth verse with a rhetorical question – using an appropriate simile
he asks if just as flies ‘plague’ horses’ ears, are the horses also tormented by
memories of their fame? The answer is, no. Animals, unlike humans, have no
awareness of self. They have neither expectations nor memories. Although they
are champions one moment, and ‘at grass’ the next they are not conscious of this.
• Larkin runs on the last word of the fourth verse reflecting his next image: ‘they/
have slipped their names’, left their famous names behind just as they ‘slipped’ the
starting gate at the start of a race or ‘slipped’ their tackle when they finished their
race. Now, like soldiers ordered to assume a relaxed position, they stand ‘at ease’
and now when they gallop he speculates it must be ‘for joy’, no longer to win.
Unlike at race meetings no one watches them through ‘field-glasses’ as they race
‘home’, no one records their speed at the gallop. Now only the stable groom who
looks after them and his ‘stable boy’ come for them to lead them into their stables
for the night. Their only tackle now is the bridle – they need no bits or saddles.
Larkin is drawing a contrast here between the horses and humans. We, unlike the
horses do not ‘slip our names’. We are plagued by memories which can often
‘distress’. We can draw painful contrasts between what is now and what has been.
We have an awareness of life and death. We are unable ‘stand at ease’. Our end is
unlikely to be calm and peaceful.
• A regular verse form: in each verse line one rhymes with line four and line three
with line six. Line two and five rhyme or part rhyme. The poem also has a regular
rhythm, each line having eight syllables. This steady metre and enjambement
between verses suit the reflective mood of the poem.
• This poem is quite unlike any of the others in Identity in that it is not written in the
first person and the subject is animals. However it is about memory so it might
usefully be compared with Miracle on St David’s Day, Old Man, Old Man or any of
the Heaney poems.