An Arundel Tomb
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd--
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainess of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends could see:
A sculptor's sweet comissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
Their air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone finality
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Commentary
This is the last poem in Larkin’s collection ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. If one must sum up Larkin’s poetry in general, it would be in the famous line: ‘To all that shot and missed’. Larkin deals with the reality and imperfection of human existence. He spares no one; he tells all the ugly truths. His poems constantly drive home how human intentions fall short of the final goal.
This is what gives rise to the sweet irony in the last stanza of this poem. The seeming goal of eternal love has come about despite the fact that there was no original intention. Why does it come about? Because human beings still want to believe that there can be such a thing as perfect everlasting love even though we know intellectually that it cannot exist, hence ‘Our almost-instinct almost true’. It’s so human, this contradiction and precisely why this poem is strangely moving in its apparently jaded tone.
— Ann
Minstrels Links
Other Larkin poems to have featured on the list:
Poem #73, “I Remember, I Remember”
Poem #100, “Days”
Poem #178, “Water”
Poem #254, “The North Ship”
Poem #502, “MCMXIV”
Poem #544, “Toads”
All of which can be found at
The Wondering Minstrels
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Sweetsexy4eva · 14 March 2003
I belive this poem is very Un Larkin for it shows no real pesimistic approach that he usually adapts. Instantly the fact that the figures within the statue are holding hands seems remarkable for Larkin to show such intimacy and love. In his other poetry ‘lying in bed’ he does the opposite and shows that no matter how close too people are they acn be on seperate planets but with tis peom he contadicts that idea. For no matter how history, time, weather or acknoledgement of what the statue stands for changes their love and the fact that they are holding hands remians the same. The final line is the final breaking point:
‘What will survive of us is love’ The fac that in poem like’ love songs in age’ he states that everything that in youth you belived about love is found to be a lie when you reach maturity and loose the one you love. So if Larkin is true in what he says in this poem what you learn about love at any age should not be a lie because it is the only thing that will survive the trial and trivuloations of life. Alexandra Cooke
Andrew Felton · 25 March 2004
If anybody needs to be confronted with the beauty and thrill of poetry, they will be after reading this. I read this as a young college student and was radically moved by it- ‘changed utterly’ in the words of W.B. Yeats. To me, An Arundel Tomb is a reminder of the subliminal power of the truly great poet and his work. Larkin crystallises in this poem a freshly-created universe that tells us of the transience of life and yet, at the same time, the timelessness of love (it persists rigidly) nutshelled in that last line - ‘what will survive of us is love’. The line ‘snow fell - undated’ just knocks me off my feet. Through the changefulness of time lies the changelessness of love…
Andrewf
Rupert Lawler · 15 April 2004
Actually what Larkin is saying in love songs in age is the fickle nature of the music industry and uses that as a representation of the narro minded un enlightened people within our society and is very typical of Larkin-quite simple really.
Stephen Leake · 23 December 2004
Please correct the word ‘finality’ to ‘fidelity’ in the final stanza!!!!
Thankyou-
www.writesight.com/writers/sleake
Stephen Leake
Vi Saffer · 30 April 2007
IT SUCKS
DO A BETTER ONE!!!!!!!!!
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