The poem explores the theme of nostalgia experienced by mercenary soldiers away from their mountain homes. In vivid detail, the first two stanzas describe the soldiers' physical and emotional suffering as they long for the high altitudes, familiar tastes, smells, and sounds of their homeland. Leaving came with "a sweet pain in the heart" and hurt to hear the "music of home" summoning them back. The final stanza depicts the changed reality upon one soldier's return, finding the same streets but everything different, reflecting how nostalgia transforms perceptions of place and past. Overall, the poem elicits sympathy for how wartime service forces soldiers to grapple with displacement and loss of innocence about home.

1. MCMXIV
Phillip Larkin

2. Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

3. And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats' restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again

4. – MCMXIV,” like many of Philip Larkin’s poems, is a meditation. This poetic form,
modelled on John Donne’s prose Meditations, begins with a description of an
object, a place, or an event. The description leads directly into a response or a
consideration of the issues, problems, and complexities suggested by the object;
this consideration then leads to a conclusion or resolution. In “MCMXIV” the object
is a 1914 photograph of British volunteers lined up in front of an army recruiting
office after England entered World War I. By extension the poem considers the pre
war British society that those men represent. The poem itself does not overtly
indicate that the photograph is the object of meditation; rather, the title (Roman
numerals for 1914) and the description provide that context. While readers can not
know whether Larkin was contemplating a particular photograph, there are
examples of this type of picture in most illustrated histories of World War I.

5. – Larkin restates for his time the major literary interpretation of the war. His
conclusion that innocence was lost as a result of the horrors of war is consistent
with the reading of the experience given by his predecessors. In fact, this reading
has reached the status of myth or master narrative—a coherent story which claims
to explain a major social phenomenon. In this myth, prewar England is seen as
idyllic. The social order was fixed and secure: Each class knew its role and strove
only to succeed in that role. The country shared adherence to the Church of
England. Science assured an unbroken path of progress, promising that life would
continue to get better and better. All was orderly, civil, and decorous. In fact, in an
ironic contrast, the summer of 1914, the months immediately before the war, were
warm and sunny, the most beautiful summer anyone could remember.

6. Context
– Phillip Larkin was born four years after the conclusion of the war . He composed
poetry which reflected the dreariness of post-war provincial England .
– He often employed the traditional tools of poetry, rhyme, stanza and meter , to
explore the often uncomfortable or terrifying experiences thrust upon common
people in the modern age .
– World War I was a highly literary war—it was unusual in the number of soldiers who
wrote poems, novels, and memoirs about their experience. Wilfred Owen, Siegfried
Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Graves, and David Jones are but a
few of the authors to write major works about the war experience. So important is
World War I as a subject in modern British literature that it is in no way unusual to
see Larkin returning to it nearly fifty years after the event. With “MCMXIV” he
places himself in a significant literary tradition.

7. Structure
– Each Stanza consists of eight lines, yet only the fourth and eighth line in each
stanza rhyme . Therefore it could be argued that the poems structure is not very
rigid, due to the abundance of lines that do not rhyme . Larkin perhaps chose to
do this because he may have wanted to have more freedom in his writing –
without this restriction , it could be argued that the poem is not forced – it is
instead a very raw and real exploration of certain elements of the war .

8. Main themes of the poem
– Realties of War
– The home front
– Loss of innocence
– Class and background

9. The “long uneven lines” are the men as they line up to enlist . The
oval and Park are both sporting venues for cricket and football, and
so it is ironic that the men are standing “patiently” as if they are
simply waiting to get inside; this is symbolic of the overall attitude
held by the men who wanted to enlist, because patriotic as they
were. They were unaware of the realities of war .

10. One of the possible interpretations of the word ‘archaic’ is that these faces belong to the
men of the older generation, who are also unaware of the harsh and brutal realities that the
younger men will have to face. However another interpretation is that this part of the stanza
still revolves around the men who are waiting to enlist, and that they are ‘grinning’, they will
soon miss and long for the days which they could take pleasure from , such as the ones
during an ‘August bank holiday’
Everyone believed that the war would be over by Christmas , and so the poets choice of the
word ‘ lark; conveys this lack attitude .
“The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached achaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark ;

11. This stanza explores aspects of the homefront. It could be
argued that she shops are shut perhaps due to the shortage
of food , as many people stashed food for later on – many
stores ran out of food at the start of August 1914 .
The ‘ children at play’ gives the reader the image of very
innocent aspect of childhood and youth . However , the dark
clothes provided a stark contrast, giving a sense of
foreboding .
And the shut shops, the bleached
Establishments names on the sunblind's,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark clothed children at play

12. Called after Kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For coca and twist and the pubs
widen open all day
The remainder of this stanza explores more aspects of the homefront . The ‘ tin
advertisements’ represent the propaganda that encouraged young men to enlist .
The pubs ‘ wide open all day’ are a result of it being a Bank Holiday . However, this
significant because it conveys a sense of jubilation and happiness, which was the
general feeling held by people due to the fact that they believed the war would be
over by Christmas and that the young men would be ‘ doing their bit’ for their
country .

13. And the countryside not caring:
The place – names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats restless silence;
The differently – dresses servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
The countryside is described as ‘not caring’ – this could be seen as a reference to
nature’s indifference to man made catastrophes (also seen ‘ The explosion’) The
‘Place – names ‘ is a reference to the names that certain areas and regions were
given when Willian the Conquer had the doomsday Book written .
The ‘different – dressed servants’ could be seen as being a reference to the men
who fought in the war, implying that all of the men, regardless of their previous
class and background, was a ‘servant’ to his county . This is supported by the
phrase ‘differently dressed ‘ .

14. Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again .
This stanza explores the loss of innocence experienced by the men as a result of thwar.
The innocence and happiness that is portrayed at the beginning of the poem could be
seen as having been taken away by the ‘shadowing Domesday ‘ referenced to in the
third stanza (the war being seen as Domesday)
The men were leaving their tidy ‘gardens’ , houses and homes to the ‘untidiness’ of
War, unaware that they would become ‘tainted’ . The ‘thousands of marriages’
represents the marriages that would soon end as a result of the men who failed to
return home .
Larkins choice of the phrase ‘Never such innocence again’ gives the reader the
impression that he is implying that such a horrific and brutal event could never possibly
happen again . But because ‘ MCMXIV’ was published in 1964, after World War Two ,
the line could be interpreted as being ironic .

15. Nostalgia
Carol Ann Duffy

16. Those early mercenaries, it made them ill –
leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air
to go down, down. What they got
was money, dull, crude coins clenched
in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste,
stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds,
the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath –
wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor,
they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.
It was a given name. Hearing tell of it,
there were those whop stayed put, fearful
of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt,
in that heavier air, to hear
the music of home – the sad pipes – summoning,
in the dwindling light of the plains,
a particular place – where maybe you met a girl,
or searched for a yellow ball in the long grass,
found it just as your mother called you in.
But the word was out. Some would never
fall in love had they not heard of love.
So the priest stood at the stile with his head
in his hands, crying at the workings of memory
through the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacher
opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.
It was Spring when one returned, with his life
in a sack on his back, to find the same street
with the same sign over the inn, the same bell
chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.

17. About:
– It is about the war and how the soldiers miss their loved ones and
homes. It is from their perspective and tells us how they reminisce
about their lives before they had to go to war.
– The reader can see a harsh contrast from the warmth of the idea f home
to the coldness of war and suffering forced upon the soldiers.
– The reader is forced to feel sadness and sympathy/empathy for the
soldiers.

18. Context
– The soldiers Duffy uses are the Swiss mercenaries in the 17th century. They
fought for other peoples causes for money. Through doing these violent actions,
they were able to provide for themselves. Their motivation came from the fact
that they lived in complete poverty. The were feared by many people.
– They didn’t enjoy this lifestyle as the poem also suggests. They missed their
homes and longed for what they used to have. It was believed that this natural
longing for home was actually a mental illness caused when the descended
mountains and the air pressure changed. They were also thought to be
possessed by demons, but in fact it was just the nostalgia that they
experienced.

19. – VOICE:
– The voice is represented by the perspective of the soldiers as a collective. The detail contained
in the poem is suggestive of multiple experiences even though there is only one speaker. The
reader is able to form a connection from the level of detail.
– SPEAKER:
– The reader can assume that the speaker is someone who has had a personal experience of war
and this sense of nostalgia. The reader receives the notion that the speaker has a deeper
understanding of how a soldier would feel. The reader is forced to feel sympathy through the
narrators use of emotive language, ‘wept’, ‘fear’. The reader is able to gain a stronger
understanding of the extreme effects of the war on individuals because we see that even once
they have come home and everything seems to be the same, everything is completely different
now.
– FORM:
– Written in three stanzas, first two have 9 lines, last one has 10 lines. This could suggest the
progression of the feeling of nostalgia.

20. Main themes of the poem
– Time
– Nostalgia
– Loss
– Past

21. Stanza 1

22. Stanza 2

23. Stanza 3