Some scenes demand comparing. Set them side by side and ponder, How alike? How different?

At first glance Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and Philip Larkin (1922-1985) strike us as incomparably unlike, like contrasting daffodils and cheese. Yet here both are, in empty rural churches, awed, subdued, wrestling strong emotions. Their epochs are so different – 1824, when England was first sensing its emergence into the world’s superpower, and 1954, when that same England, battered by two world wars and loss of empire, was uncertain, anxious, licking its wounds.

Their art, too, is different. A genial essayist, Lamb was buddy to many of the literary titans of his age, gregarious, glad, albeit deeply wounded, Larkin a lonely, often cantankerous poet, whose frequently complex creations defy casual enjoyment.

Yet the similarities. Both lifelong bachelors; both composing (we sense) to crack out of searing solitude. Both unflinching, but lonely even so. Both precise, almost finicky, in their use of words.

Now envision both in the same “frowsty” rural sanctuary, Larkin arriving moments after Lamb’s departure. Both passages below merit scrutiny. Lamb’s is an aside in a happy essay, Larkin’s in the view of many (Harold Pinter among them) one of the mightiest poems in our language. Luxuriate. Inhale the silence. Don’t rush.

Both these lonesome sensitive gents have interrupted their solitary jaunt to stop by this quaint sanctuary – almost by happenstance, but not quite. For both are seekers – of sense – and solace – some clue why this encounter matters to them. Neither’s a regular churchgoer, but both feel ripe with reverence.

Lamb submits to holiness as wholly as a child in his mother’s arms: no doubts, no resistance. ‘With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons,” (he) “drink(s) in the tranquillity of the place,” till he becomes as still as the surrounding effigies: he has, like them, for this instant, died and gone to heaven.

Larkin is a nervous jumble of reactions. He’d take his hat off if he had one; instead he removes his “cycle-clips in awkward reverence.” He sizes up the place with the dispassion of a contractor, wondering if the roof has been replaced or restored. He tries out the acoustics from the lectern with a sonorous “Here endeth,” unsettlingly noisier than he’d intended; drops a perfunctory small coin in the donation box – from habit, not delight; wonders grumpily why he’d even bothered to pause his bike-ride here. “Yet” – the poem spectacularly pivots –

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published stop I did: in fact I often do,And always end much at a loss like this,Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,When churches fall completely out of useWhat we shall turn them into

Now, unexpectedly, he’s envisioning the eventual dissolution of these old premises and of the forthright sturdy religious conviction that constructed them. Will that roof fall in – and rain – and grass grow – and sheep graze – and superstitious souls wander here to perform spooky rights – or sniffy antiquarians – or sentimentalists, seeking a whiff of old Christmas? Or will the future visitant be – (the poem’s second great pivot and a dazzling use of this noun) – Larkin’s “representative” – that is, his delegate from the past and one who presents his perplexed personality reborn?

This successor self returns to the old church with less impatience. “It pleases me,” he reflects,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published to stand in silence here;

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedA serious house on serious earth it is,In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,Are recognised, and robed as destinies.And that much never can be obsolete,Since someone will forever be surprisingA hunger in himself to be more serious

Both Lamb and Larkin feel eternity’s embrace. We too.

*

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBut would’st thou know the beauty of holiness?– go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church: think of the piety that has kneeled there – the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there – the meek pastor – the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. – Charles Lamb (1824)

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Church Going – Philip Larkin (1954)

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOnce I am sure there’s nothing going onI step inside, letting the door thud shut.Another church: matting, seats, and stone,And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cutFor Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuffUp at the holy end; the small neat organ;And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take offMy cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMove forward, run my hand around the font.From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.Mounting the lectern, I peruse a fewHectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the doorI sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedYet stop I did: in fact I often do,And always end much at a loss like this,Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,When churches fall completely out of useWhat we shall turn them into, if we shall keepA few cathedrals chronically on show,Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOr, after dark, will dubious women comeTo make their children touch a particular stone;Pick simples for a cancer; or on someAdvised night see walking a dead one?Power of some sort or other will go onIn games, in riddles, seemingly at random;But superstition, like belief, must die,And what remains when disbelief has gone?Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedA shape less recognisable each week,A purpose more obscure. I wonder whoWill be the last, the very last, to seekThis place for what it was; one of the crewThat tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiffOf gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?Or will he be my representative,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly siltDispersed, yet tending to this cross of groundThrough suburb scrub because it held unspiltSo long and equably what since is foundOnly in separation – marriage, and birth,And death, and thoughts of these – for which was builtThis special shell? For, though I’ve no ideaWhat this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,It pleases me to stand in silence here;

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedA serious house on serious earth it is,In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,Are recognised, and robed as destinies.And that much never can be obsolete,Since someone will forever be surprisingA hunger in himself to be more serious,And gravitating with it to this ground,Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,If only that so many dead lie round.