At Grass. Help please

[litlenani]

Can any one help me in analyzing "At Grass" by Philip Larkin. this is the poem
At Grass by Philip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances surficed
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 the 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 crowd 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 grooms, and the grooms boy,
With bridles in the evening come.




this is my paraphrase.
AT GRASS is one of Philip Larkin’s poems. It has been written of Larkin’s Hardyesque pessimism, his depiction of loneliness, age, and death. Most of Larkin’s poems talk about the changes in everyday English life in the world of postimperical Britain. AT GRASS talks about the change in the state of horse-racing.
The poem opens by a description of a scene at the beginning of a horse- race. Horses are sheltered wating for the race to begin. A spectator can hardly distinguish them, because they all look the same. That is why thery are anonymous. It is only when the wind blows and moves the horses’ tails and manes; and when a horse moves about or looks on from his shelter, a person can distinguish among them. But, after whatever the horses do, they return back and “ stand anonymous again”.
Suddenly, Larkin switches to the past using a flashback technique. In the past, horse-racing is considered to be an important means of entertainment. People, at that time, enjoy the race in the “classic Junes”. They eat, drink, and “cry”. Their cries rise when the winner is announced, and they do not “subside” till his name is puplished in press. Those happy days, when people had liesure time, deserve to be recorded as happy stories to be narrated for children.
Then, the poet reveals his pessimism. His troubled thoughts agonize him. He shows the similarity between memories and flies when they rush to a horses’ ears to attack them. Those beautiful memories vanish just like the flies when the horses shake their heads. Moreover, nightfall comes and covers every thing. It becomes dark and gloomy. Names are the only living things from those past happy days, because they have been recorded.
Finally, Philip Larkin describes the state of old horses. No one is interested in them any more as they were in the prime of their youth. Only the groom and his son come temporarely to check on them. This is the philosophy Lakin wants to convey. However you are strong, rich, young, and happy; one day you will decline. You will be neglected and unnoticed just like these old horses.

Please can any body help me .I need more analysis for the poem. If you can suggest any websites pleeeeeaaaaase do give them to me.
:(

[Wimseysecho]

:) Hi.

I believe you have misinterpreted Larkin's lovely paean to the race horse. While it is a very popular thing to disseminate all poetry to be little more than metaphor for death (take, for example, Frost's "Stopping By the Woods..."), and this is often correct, Larkin's poem does not refer to the horses at the start as awaiting a race, but rather actually standing in the shade long after their racing careers are past. It is more correcct to see the poem as a metaphor for the vagaries of celebrity and finding one's true inner self. These horses have shed that which was flung upon them with their breeding, the mantle of their "names," and are now what they are, simply animals with nothing to live up to but the pleasure in existence. They are as nature intended them, rather than the machine which created them. Larkin, a lover of horses, saw them as exploited during the race career, and only truly free of the shackles that bound them upon retirement from that life.

"Do memories plague their ears like flies? They shake their heads," he points out that they care not for what man presumes of them, and do not bear the burden of memories of the past, but care only for the sheltering tree, the cooling breeze, the attention of the stable boys who come to collect them at night.

"They have slipped their names, and stand at ease, or gallop for what must be joy," is a reference to that freedom that comes with truly knowing ones self inside, not that which is thrust upon us or presumed about us.

This is far from a sorrowful work:bawling: , but is in fact a celebration of these animals' lives. :)

I keep ex-racehorses and can tell you from personal experience and some reading on Larkin's life, that he is right. And yes, when they gallop, it is only for joy. They don't care if their grandfather was Seattle Slew, only that they will get treats to nibble, blankets to kelp keep warm, and a loving touch from a kind hand. They have, indeed, slipped those names.:nod: