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Aubade (poem)

"Aubade" is a poem by the British poet Philip Larkin. It was begun in 1974 in the year his last collection High Windows was published, but wasn't until the death of his mother in the November of 1977 that he finished the poem. It was his final major published work and appeared in the 23 December issue of The Times Literary Supplement.

The poem consists of five stanzas of ten lines each, utilising an unorthodox a,b,a,b,c,c,d,e,e,d rhyming scheme.

Larkin's style, especially towards the back end of his career, was bound up in the recurring themes of death and fatalism. "Aubade" is considered by many to be the pinnacle of his handling of these subjects and, although it was followed by "Love Again" and "The Mower", his true swansong.

An aubade's classical definition is a love song that either celebrates or laments lovers parting at daybreak. However, in this poem, Larkin's lamentations deal with humans' fear of parting from life. Its poignancy is accentuated by its almost autobiographical tone as poem's narrator utilises the first-person pronoun 'I' as they describe waking up in the wee hours contemplating how the dawning of a new day brings death "a whole day nearer now", reflecting Larkin's fears about his own death in the midst of his physical decline.

The poem is available to hear, read by Philip Larkin himself, here.