Church Going is a satire on Christianity the way Larkin describes his visit to a church is all mockery. In this poem, he shows his sceptical attitude to Christianity then his attitude of scepticism becomes emphatic when he says that, at the end of every visit to a church, he has felt much at a loss and always wondered what to look for them.
“Yet stop I did: in fact - I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for.”
This scepticism continues with his saying that he now wonders what would happen to the church buildings when people stop going to them to offer prayers. Evidently he believes that the time is coming when people would lose their religious faith and would therefore stop going to churches. In a half mocking tone he says that some of the churches would be used as museums with all the paraphernalia of a church on display, while the remaining churches would be “let to rain and sheep.”
“When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent - free to rain and sheep.”
Also amusing are the lines in which the speaker speculates as to the identity of the last, the very last, person who might visit church in the beli that he is visiting house of God for his spiritual edification.
" … I wonder who
will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was. "
The last stanza seems to express the poet's view that a few of the forsaken deserted, and ruined churches would continue to be visited by some people, if for no other reason, then only to draw some wisdom from the sight of the numerous graves in the churchyards . After all, the thought of death, to some extent, does make us wiser.
“A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.”
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