Love songs in Age

The title of the poem Love songs in Age shows that his poem is going to be about Songs and how it takes you back your memories when you fell in love.  There are 3 stanza's in the poem and each contains 8 lines. Larkin uses devices such as personification, Caesura and Alliteration.

The first stanza talks about where the songs where kept and how the covers of the songs tell a story. The fist/second line of the stanza, " She kept her songs, they kept so little space, The covers pleased her" shows that she likes the songs she has and she is glad that she has kept them. In the third lines she talks about one of the song covers and says's " One bleached from lying in a sunny place". This shows that when she was younger she was paralyzed with happiness and she spent a lot of time in the sun. The flowing cover she talks about is " One marked in circles by a vase of water", this shows that she is a women who receives lots of flowers or perhaps used to get lots of flowers.  The third cover she talks about is " One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, which shows that she damaged the song once and tried to fix it, this show that the music has  important sentimental values and memories. The following and  line in the stanza " And colored, by her daughter" shows that the lady in the poem has a daughter and that her daughter drew on one of the songs. All these sheets of music shows that the lady in poem has a relatively happy life. The next line in the poem " So they had waited, till, in widowhood " shows that she when the lady is on her own she rediscovers the songs and looks at them. The last line in the poem " She found them, looking for something else, and stood" tells the reader, she found the music by accident and did not find them on purpose.

The second stanza  starts of by saying "Relearning how each frank ( showing ones thoughts and feeling openly) submissive chord Had ushered ( to lead in) in".  The following line in the stanza is "Word after sprawling ( to spread out in a irregular way) hyphenated word". The line is " And the unfailing sense of being young" shows that the songs take her back when she was younger and memories of her past.  The flowing line, which is "Spread out like a spring- woken tree" suggests that she feels like a younger woman and she is blossoming again. In the last lines of the stanza " That certainty of time laid up in store As when she played them first. But, even more," Larkin suggests that the songs reminds her when she had all these exiting things yet to come.   It also shows the belief that we have so much time to do everything in life, we could want… it’s only as we age, that we realize time is limited

The last stanza in the poem starts of with " The glare of that much mentioned brilliance, love, broke out to show". This makes the songs seem blinding which hurts the eyes , it also suggests that the songs are memories of love and youth. However in this line Larkin is being sarcastic and so that the lady might be blind from the truth to show disappointment.  The following line mentions the words incipience, which means the early stages of the beginning.   The next line is "Still promising to solve, and satisfy And set unchangeable in order.". This shows that the women wants the songs to solve and satisfy all the problems she faces and that love is meant to solve all the problems in the world. The following line which is " To pile them back, to cry," shows that she does not want to put the music back were she found them because they are full of good memories. However the last two lines in the poem "Was, without lamely admitting how It had done so then, and could not now" shows that love did not live up to its expectations and has fouled her.