"Home Is So Sad" appears in Philip Larkin's 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings. The poem describes the sadness of visiting home after an extended time away—and more generally, the sadness of the failed dreams that people invest in their homes. When family members move out, the poem suggests, their homes remain behind as a kind of gloomy shrine, memorializing all that the family hoped for in life but never managed to attain.

• Read the full text of “Home Is So Sad”

• “Home Is So Sad” Summary

• “Home Is So Sad” Themes

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    Home, Loss, and Disappointment

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-10

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Home Is So Sad”

  • Lines 1-3

    Home is so ...
    ... win them back.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 3-5

    Instead, bereft ...
    ... aside the theft

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 6-8

    And turn again ...
    ... Long fallen wide.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 8-10

    You can see ...
    ... stool. That vase.

    

    

    

    

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• “Home Is So Sad” Symbols

  • 

    The Vase

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Line 10: “That vase.”

• “Home Is So Sad” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Personification

    

    

    

    

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    Where personification appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-6

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “so sad,” “stays”
    • Line 3: “back,” “bereft”
    • Line 5: “Having,” “heart”
    • Line 8: “wide,” “was”

  • Caesura

    

    

    

    

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    Where caesura appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “sad. It”
    • Line 3: “back. Instead, bereft”
    • Line 4: “please, it”
    • Line 8: “wide. You”
    • Line 10: “stool. That”

  • Enjambment

    

    

    

    

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    Where enjambment appears in the poem:

    • Lines 2-3: “go / As”
    • Lines 3-4: “bereft / Of”
    • Lines 5-6: “theft / And”

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Lines 2-3: “Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back.”
    • Line 4: “it withers so,”
    • Line 5: “Having no heart to put aside the theft”
    • Lines 6-8: “what it started as, / A joyous shot at how things ought to be, / Long fallen wide.”

• “Home Is So Sad” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Bereft
  • Wide
  • Cutlery
  • Piano stool
  • (Location in poem: Lines 3-4: “Instead, bereft / Of anyone to please,”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Home Is So Sad”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Home Is So Sad” Speaker

• “Home Is So Sad” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Home Is So Sad”

• More “Home Is So Sad” Resources

  • External Resources

    • More on "The Movement" — Read the British Library's introduction to the literary group with which Larkin was associated.

    • The Poet's Life and Work — Read a biography of Larkin at the Poetry Foundation.

    • The Poem Aloud — Listen to Philip Larkin read "Home Is So Sad."

    • A Chat with Larkin — Watch a 1964 interview with the poet.

    • A Larkin Documentary — Watch a short film about the life and work of Philip Larkin.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin

    • Afternoons

    • An Arundel Tomb

    • A Study of Reading Habits

    • Church Going

    • Coming

    • MCMXIV

    • Money

    • Mr Bleaney

    • Next, Please

    • Poetry of Departures

    • Talking in Bed

    • The Trees

    • The Whitsun Weddings

    • This Be The Verse

    • Water

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