In this poem, Philip Larkin explores what happens when people who have lived in a home leave it behind. We are not given the exact reasons for the departure of those who once lived there, but the personifi ed home has been abandoned and left to ‘wither’.
Home is so Sad By Philip Larkin
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.
