Nothing To Be Said

Theme/Content:

This poem is a pessimistic one about death, and the meaning of life, fundamentally a journey towards death for everyone.

Analysis:

• In the first stanza there is a contrast in people and cultures, between civilised and primitive. 'Nations vague as weed' are those small isolated communities, 'to nomads' which are travellers with no permanent home, to Hull with 'cobble-close families in mill-towns' which brings the reader back to working class people. 
• Larkin ends the first stanza with a paradox. 'Life is slow dying'. Even though all those people seem different, they are all linked with the fact they will all die, death provides equality. The meaning of life is to live then to die, life is slow death.
• The second stanza talks about what people do with their life, to fulfil their time when they're living. 'Building, benediction' an alliteration which talks about filling time with religion, kindness and blessings don't do anything to stop progressing to death however just occupy the time.
• 'Measuring love and money... ways of slow dying' suggests that Larkin thinks that people revolve their lives around these two things, filling in the gaps between birth and death. Love and money sound materialistic because they are being measured, like an item. 
• 'Hunting pig... a garden-party' refer to upper class society and their leisure activities. This is the animalistic vs civilised, primitive compared to formal and sophisticated.
• 'Hours giving evidence on birth' implies you have to prove yourself when you're alive, to make something of yourself. This stanza links to all the different jobs in society, 'giving evidence' could be a law job, 'or birth' relates to hospitals and doctors but everyone advances on 'death equally'. The 'advance' is a zeugma, for comic effect. These things in life distract them from the inevitable and it becomes ironic that death is inescapable. 
• The last lines in the stanza shows the different views of death. 'Means nothing' suggests that some people don't care about dying, whether they believe in the afterlife or not. 'Others it leaves nothing to be said' implies people who think about life are overwhelmed, traumatised and are scared because they know they can't escape it.