Is Philip Larkin an anti-romantic poet?

In answering this question, much depends on how one
chooses to define "romantic" and "anti-romantic."

For
example, if one chooses to define "romantic" as implying optimism, naivete, celebration
of love, celebration of the beauties of nature, and celebration of lofty, transcendent
human potential, then it seems safe to categorize Larkin as an "anti-romantic" poet. His
verse is often realistic, hard-headed, sometimes even cynical, and deliberately
unsentimental. It is not by coincidence that Thomas Hardy, with his bleak vision of
life, was one of Larkin's favorite English poets. Yet part of what gives Larkin's poetry
its peculiar power is that he can often see and appreciate the beauties of life, even if
he considers them inevitably mutable.

In the standard
anthology piece "MCMXIV," which describes the eagerness of men to enlist in 1914 in
World War I, the speaker concludes,

readability="11">

Never such
innocence,

Never before or since, . .
.

.          .          .         
.

Never such innocence again. (25-26,
32)

Here the speaker clearly
asserts that such innocence is a thing of the past, but he also seems on one level to
admire the innocence whose passing he describes.

Likewise,
in "Talking in Bed," the speaker begins by claiming
that

Talking
in bed ought to be easiest,

Lying together there goes back
so far,

An emblem of two people being honest.
(1-3)

Yet as soon as one
reaches the word "ought," one realizes that the speaker is describing an ideal that no
longer prevails, at least in his own life, if it ever did. Indeed, the conclusion of the
poem is decidedly unsentimental. In the intimate relationship he
describes,

It
becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and
kind,

Or not untrue and not unkind.
(10-12)

A stereotypically
"romantic" poet might have closed with a solution to this kind of "isolation" (9), but
Larkin rejects such a sentimental ending.  Even so, the closing lines show that the
speaker does value truth and kindness, however difficult it may be to find words to
express such ideals.

"The Explosion" seems, in some ways, a
thoroughly anti-romantic poem, especially since it describes the devastating loss of
life of miners in an explosion in the pit.  The speaker reports, without comment, the
conventionally comforting words of a clergyman preaching at a funeral
service:

The
dead go on before us, they

Are sitting in God's house in
comfort,

We shall see them face to face --
(16-18)

A romantic or
sentimental poet might have tried to convince us of the truth of this assertion. Larkin
does not. He simply lets the assertion speak for itself, allowing readers to decide
whether it is genuinely comforting or merely a collection of predictable cliches.
Neverthelss, the poem does end on a very tender note.  One of the miners, before work
had begun, had discovered "a nest of lark's eggs" and had shown the eggs to his comrades
(8-9).  As the poem concludes, the speaker describes how the widows of the miners, after
hearing the sermon, imagine seeing their dead husbands
again,

. . .
walking

Somehow from the sun towards
them,

One showing the eggs
unbroken.

Thus, although
Larkin is often thought of as a plain-spoken, sometimes even slightly crude writer (his
poem "Sad Steps" begins with the memorable line "Groping back to bed after a piss"),
there is often real tenderness, real feeling in his poems. Larkin could appreciate love
and beauty very deeply; he simply never assumed that they would last
forever.