Toads by Philip Larkin (The Poem & Summary)

 

Toads

by Philip Larkin

(The Poem & Summary) 

Philip Arthur Larkin (1922 – 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

After graduating from Oxford University in 1943, Larkin became a librarian. Influenced by W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, and Thomas Hardy, his poems are highly structured but flexible verse forms.

Toads

(The Poem)

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork

And drive the brute off?

 

Six days of the week it soils

With its sickening poison –

Just for paying a few bills!

That’s out of proportion.

 

Lots of folk live on their wits:

Lecturers, lispers,

Losels, loblolly-men, louts-

They don’t end as paupers;

 

Lots of folk live up lanes

With fires in a bucket,

Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-

they seem to like it.

 

Their nippers have got bare feet,

Their unspeakable wives

Are skinny as whippets – and yet

No one actually starves.

 

Ah, were I courageous enough

To shout Stuff your pension!

But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff

That dreams are made on:

 

For something sufficiently toad-like

Squats in me, too;

Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,

And cold as snow,

 

And will never allow me to blarney

My way of getting

The fame and the girl and the money

All at one sitting.

 

I don’t say, one bodies the other

One’s spiritual truth;

But I do say it’s hard to lose either,

When you have both.

Summary

In the poem, describing his work as a toad, the poet asks, why he should allow this toad to become a burden on his life. He wants, his wit or intelligence, to fling this toad away in order to get rid of it. This toad makes the six working days of every week of his life miserable, and he has to endure this toad (his work/duties) just to meet his routine expenses. The money, which he gets for enduring this toad, is too little for the amount of work which he has to do. The poet, further says, that in this world, there are many people, who do not have to work, and who maintain themselves merely by using their wits. There are lecturers; there are persons who speak in an affected manner to impress others; there are the never-do-wells; there are the idlers, and others like them. All such persons manage to exist in this world without becoming paupers. There are people, like the gypsies, who have no homes and who live in temporary structures or in tents, lighting their fires in buckets. They eat just what they get by chance, or they eat tinned sardines, and they seem to like this way of living. Their children go about bare-foot because they cannot afford shoes. The men-folk among these people have wretched wives who are as thin as a race-dog. In spite of their poverty, these people manage to exist in the world without starving.

The poet wishes for enough courage, to throw up his job and his pension but he cannot leave his job because he knows that to lead a life without work is something impossible for him. He cannot leave his job because of the toad, which forces him to continue working. This toad-like creature is so demanding and stern that the poet cannot resist it. This inner toad (inner urge to work) would not even allow him to use persuasion or flattery in order to achieve his desire for fame, to marry the girl whom he loves, and to get the money which he needs for his food and other expenses. The poet cannot says, that the toad outside forces him to work; and his conscience within him also urges him to work. But the two compulsions are of different kinds. And it is difficult for him to get rid of either of these compelling forces. The two forces exist side by side, leaving him no choice except to work.