Talking in Bed

The poem is composed of four tercets. A tercet, also known as a triplet, is a stanza consisting of three lines. Traditionally, a tercet has only one rhyme, that is, each line ends with the same rhyme, as in Robert Herrick’s seventeenth-century poem, “Upon Julia’s Clothes”:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes (Herrick, Robert. “Upon Julia’s Clothes.” 1648. Poetry Foundation, Lines 1-3).

Larkin follows the traditional rhyme pattern in only the last of the four tercets. Here, “find” (Line 10), “kind” (Line 11), and “unkind” (Line 12) all rhyme. His rhyme scheme in the first three tercets is more complex. In the first stanza Line 1 (“easiest”) rhymes with Line 3 (“honest”). Stanza 2 follows the same pattern: “silently” (Line 4) rhymes with “sky” (Line 6), while the middle line of that stanza, “unrest” (Line 5) rhymes with Lines 1 and 3 of the previous stanza. This pattern is followed in Stanza 3 also, in which Line 7 (“horizon”) rhymes with Line 9 (“isolation”), while Line 8, the middle line of Stanza 3 (“why”) rhymes with Lines 4 and 6. This rhyme scheme is aba cac, dcd, followed by eee in the final tercet. The clever rhyme scheme is not unusual in Larkin’s poetry: “Sad Steps,” for example, has six tercets and a similarly intricate rhyme scheme.

Only some of the rhymes would be considered perfect rhymes, in which the rhyming sounds are exact. These are “sky” (Line 6) and “why” (Line 8), and “find” (Line 10) and “kind” (Line 11). These are also known as masculine rhymes, consisting of a single stressed syllable. Two of the other rhymes occur on the feminine, or, unstressed, final syllable of a line, such as “easiest” (Line 1) and “honest” (Line 3), and “horizon” (Line 7) and “isolation” (Line 9). Strictly speaking, these should not be considered feminine rhymes, since a feminine rhyme involves two syllables, the first one stressed and the second one unstressed.

The poem also has an example of a partial or near rhyme rather than perfect rhyme. Line 5 ends with the word “unrest,” which is rhymed with “easiest” (Line 1) and “honest” (Line 3), although the vowel sound is different and only the last consonant rhymes with the last consonants in the earlier lines.

Another example of partial rhyme occurs in Stanza 2, with “silently” (Line 4) and “sky” (Line 6). This might be thought of as an “eye-rhyme,” in which the endings are spelled alike but are pronounced differently.

The lines are mostly in pentameter, which consists of five poetic feet. A foot is a combination of two or three syllables containing stressed and unstressed syllables. There are variations in the length of the line, however. Lines 3 and 9 end with an extra unstressed syllable, which is  a feminine ending. Line 5 is a syllable short of a pentameter, echoing the sense of the “wind’s incomplete unrest.” The last tercet contains two shorter lines. Line 11 is a trimeter (three poetic feet) and Line 12 is a tetrameter (four poetic feet).

The meter varies as much as the rhyme. Much of the rhythm is iambic, which consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, but the inversion of the iamb to create a trochaic foot is also observable in the poem. A trochaic foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, and the first two lines begin with trochees not iambs, as do Lines 6 and 11.