A poem with intriguing content

Philip Larkin was a twentieth-century English poet who favored writing in traditional forms. One poem that exemplifies his style is First Sight.

First Sight
by Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air,
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

This poem packs a lot of meaning into its 14 lines. Some of the ways its meaning is worded is quite creative, as in "wretched width of cold," but in others the intent isn't as clear. For example, he wrote "They could not grasp it if they knew." If you know something, it's illogical that you would not be able to grasp it.

It's interesting how, in the poem, Larkin sometimes seems to force his rhyme scheme. For example, in line 3, he inserted "know" at that end of the line after its final comma so that it rhymes with line 1. By doing that, he added a jerkiness to the line most evident when it's read aloud. I found it to be disruptive.

His rhyme scheme in both stanzas is one I hadn't encountered before: lines 1, 3, and 5 rhyme, as do 2 and 4, and 6 and 7.