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.