Stylistically [the] thirty-two poems [in The North Ship (1945)] differ from Larkin's mature work in two ways: they are dominated by the influence of Yeats, and they lack "local texture", the air of having proceeded out of a particular experience: only eight of them have titles. Larkin frankly describes them as "a mixture of Yeats and having nothing much to write about". It is not proposed to comment here on the influence of Yeats, except to say that it is not so much a matter of deliberate pastiche as of a kind of ventriloquism, with Larkin as the dummy (or, perhaps, the medium) through whom the dead poet speaks in accents uncannily his own. Yet, despite the Irish accent, many of the sentiments are—as seen with the hindsight afforded by his later poetry—obviously Larkin's: throughout Poem I—a youthful celebration of spring, love, and resurrection—a sinister...