It's a good job I took photographs of the high windows in Chichester Cathedral today to take this project of Pictures That Bring to Mind Famous Poems because I had those in Portsmouth in mind but now I might not be going to Portsmouth Cathedral on Thursday.It simply wouldn't be the point to use a photo of the Arundel tomb to illustrate An Arundel Tomb, the poem that, although brilliant, one of Larkin's very best and just as clear and accessible as anything else he wrote, is apparently becoming a major stumbling block for Larkin scholars.
I'd love it, I'd absolutely love it, if anybody could explain how 'transformed' was an improvement on 'transfigured' on the telly last night. And where it came from.
High Windows is one of those poems where the old devil uses a swear word, just to show he can, which might have been more shocking coming from an old fogey in the 1970's than it is coming out of the mouths of every so-called comedian on the telly nowadays so early in the evening that you haven't got the rest of your respectable family to get themselves to bed yet.
But it's not about that at all, the whole poem is about the,
sun-comprehending glass
and one doesn't need to be religious to appreciate something beyond.
In fact, the non-religious who are capable of such straightforward transcendence might be one step ahead of the devout by not feeling the need to provide quite such an outrageous tapestry of explanation. Nevertheless, we are always in the debt of those who took the time and trouble to build cathedrals. They're lovely.
I'm not sure that the sun-comprehending floor in Chichester has been captured here quite as well as it was in Gloucester a little while ago.