Which poem by Philip Larkin describes a train journey on a hot bank-holiday Saturday?
The Whitsun Weddings (poem) The Whitsun Weddings (poem) "The Whitsun Weddings" is one of the best known poems by British poet Philip Larkin. It was written and rewritten and finally published in the 1964 collection of poems, also called The Whitsun Weddings. It is one of three poems that Larkin wrote about train journeys. The poem comprises eight stanzas of ten lines, making it one of his longest poems. The rhyming scheme is "a,b,a,b,c,d,e,c,d,e" - (a rhyme scheme similar to that used in various of Keats' odes). Larkin describes a stopping-train journey southwards from Paragon Station, Kingston upon Hull, where Larkin was a librarian
The Whitsun Weddings (poem) at the university, on a hot Whitsun Saturday afternoon. It has always been supposed the poem was based on an actual train journey Larkin made in 1955 on Whitsun Saturday, a day which was popular for weddings at that time though since there was a rail strike on that weekend Larkin scholar John Osborne now thinks the journey an unlikely one to have taken place. Larkin's letters mention two journeys, one to Grantham (not at Whit, some weddings), and one to London (not at Whit, no weddings), that may have been conflated in the poem. The poem's narrator describes the