Toads

Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the "toad" is the burden of working.  The burden of working six days a week just to pay the bills.  I liked the use of the toad because they are ugly and gross, but necessary.  I thought this was a really cool poem, just the basic story of it.  A man is basically working away his life, and he wishes he could have the courage to quit. But I thought the thought process of it was interesting...how he knows he could make it after quitting, people do it all the time, but he doesn't want to give up the security of the job.  That giving up his job is what "dreams are made of."  I also thought it was interesting that some of his nerves come from not wanting to live the kind of life where he swoons his way into getting what he wants.  Philip Larkin, the author, worked as a librarian for a large portion of his early life, which makes this poem easy to see where it came from.  Personally, being a librarian doesn't sound like the most exciting job there is, so he was probably frustrated with his constant, repetitive work.  Because he ended up writing, I assume librarian was not what he wanted to do...but that being a poet may have seemed like "living off his wits."  Like, maybe writing wasn't a honorable job to him.
I was really confused on the last stanza though.  What are the two things he could lose?  "One bodies the other,"
confused there too.  But that's all.