The poem The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin is about the poet’s journey to London in a train. The day is Whitsun Day on which the British Government frees marriage taxes for one day. Therefore the day fascinates people belonging to lower economic class because they cannot afford the payment of marriage taxes on other days. The poem on the surface level is a description of these experiences in that particular day.

      In the first and the second stanza, the poet describes his past experiences when he was traveling in a train. These two stanzas are full of panoramic description of the scenes; that pass by as the train moves forward. The description shows that the poet is beginning his journey from country area to city that is London. The important moment in the poem comes when newly married couples board in train. These newly married couples are accompanied by their relatives and they certainly belong to lower economic class. The description of their physical experiences with the words and phrases like “pomaded girls”, parodies of fashion” suggest that they are from the lower economic class. In each station and platform the poet witnesses the flow of such newly married couples. The poet virtually being an unmarried man is full of disgust for marriage with the arrival of those people and the poet undergoes mystifying experiences of suffocation. He is put in an uneasy situation and starts mocking the appearances of those married couples and their relatives.
      The poet after the description of the wedding couples and their relatives once again focuses on scenes outside landscape. The description can be contrasted to the description of landscape. The turning point in the poem comes at the end shown by the lines “A sense of falling, like an arrow shower sent out of sight, somewhere becomes rain”. In these lines the poet expresses his realization of importance of marriage. The poem suddenly becomes ironic because his realization contradicts his previous attitude towards marriage. In these lines “arrow, showers” and “rain” relate marriage to fertility and to the continuity of life. Therefore the ultimate knowledge about marriage is achieved finally by the poet.

The Whitsun Weddings - Poem by Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
    Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
    For miles island,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displace the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
    The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
    Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
    Yes, from cafes
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed abroad: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
    The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots. and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
    I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
-An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl -and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
    Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Traveling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.