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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 plainness 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 a 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His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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 would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The 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 glass. 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 fidelity
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.
An interpretative analysis of “An Arundel Tomb”
“An Arundel Tomb” is an elegy to the myth of enduring love. The poem eschews the power of our desire to believe in, grasp for, the pleasant legend of eternal love. With typical craft – managed meter, controlled rhyme, and uncomplicated, but frequently faceted, language – Larkin employs the image of an historical tomb in the form of an effigy of an English Earl and Countess to present the competing issues of death and love. Full of mostly soft sound and descending with a deliberate, almost unwilling, evenness, the poem contends, with soft frankness and felt disappointment, that not love, but death, is our end.
The effigy itself is an ordinary sculpture. As described in the poem – and in actuality – it is plainly carved and suffering decay. It is more an historical bookmark than a work of art: “Side by side, their faces blurred,/The earl and countess lie in stone,/Their proper habits vaguely shown/As jointed armor, stiffened pleat” (1-4). And Larkin confirms the unremarkableness of the sculpture: “Such plainness of the pre-baroque/Hardly involves the eye” (7-8). But one detail, the fulcrum image of the poem, does stand out: “One sees, with a sharp and tender shock,/His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.” (11-12).
The popular romantic response to the sculpture blooms from this aspect and Larkin begins immediately to demote the value and meaning of this hand-holding as incidental and unimportant: “Such faithfulness in effigy/Was just a detail friends would see” (14-15). And: “A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace/Thrown off in helping to prolong/The Latin names around the base.” (16-18). Larkin suggests the hand-holding was just a detail casually inserted (“Thrown off”) by a hired artisan in a project whose essential purpose was to hold in-place a banal historical reference (“…to prolong/The Latin names around its base.”).
Yet, those visitors attending the effigy “…begin/To look, not read.” (23-24) and overlook (“not read”) its ordinary purpose. Fueled by an internal need to see an essence beyond death, something beyond our skeletal fall, the charm of the held hands is suggestively regarded: “…And up the paths/The endless altered people came,/Washing at their identity.” (29-31). In “Washing at their identity” the visitors curiously become part of the flowing forces of decay that erode the simple truth of the effigy. And decay, presented as anonymous, natural, and almost delicate, is an important active element in the poem: “…how early…the air would change to soundless damage…” (19,21). And: “Light/Each summer thronged the glass.” (26-27). And: “A bright/Litter of birdcalls strewed the same/Bone-riddled ground.” (27-29). Still, human eyes ignore this usurping reality, bringing about Larkin’s wry and somber conclusion that: “Time has transfigured them into/Untruth.” (37).
We are left antagonized on the fault line of the poem’s ending
In an intriguing unwinding, almost serpentine turning, of language in the final verse, Larkin’s conclusion is clearly presented and then intentionally nearly subverted. Larkin impeaches the inference of love beyond the grave: “Time has transfigured them into/Untruth. The stone fidelity/They hardly meant…” (37-39). He contends this message of eternal love is neither true, nor was it intended. But our yearning for a substance beyond the concave silence of death is so powerful that this ambiguous tomb provokes “Our almost-instinct” and makes it “almost true” (41). But it is not true. Yet, this contention is made fragile, nearly overwhelmed, by the seductive, epitaphic blade of the final line: “What will survive of us is love.” (42). And we are left antagonized on the fault line of the poem’s ending because, as attractive and resonant as is this final line, we have already been told it is untrue.
“An Arundel Tomb”: Some Poetics
There is a rhythmic softness to the language which carries this poem and eases it into the revealing of a truth as perceived by the poet. The poem never shouts and is heavily populated with soft ‘s’, ‘f’, ‘l’, ‘th’, and ‘h’ sounds which, like a gentle wind or the blood-sound in the womb, tend to caress, coax, and entice. Consider them proliferated throughout: “Side by side” (1), “Such faithfulness in effigy…” (14), “A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace” (16), “Their supine stationary voyage…” (20), “How soon succeeding eyes begin…” (23), “…linked, through lengths and breadths of time.” (25-26), “Each summer thronged the glass…” (27). “...helpless in the hollow/of an unarmorial age…” (32-33). This subtle motion of language affects us like waves or a funeral director’s sonorous platitudes toward the poem’s unattractive truth: death abides, love is invented.
The exception to this quietness of language is in the introduction of the effigy’s hand-holding in which distinctly hard sounds are embodied: “…with a sharp tender shock…” (11). The hard ‘p’, ‘t’, and the ‘k’ sounds wrest our attention and are important as this phrase introduces: “His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.” (12). It is interesting to note also that we have the dangerous words ‘sharp’ and ‘shock’ interrupted by the very vulnerable word ‘tender’. Working together these words hurt and hope, as though hope’s real outcome is pain.
Linguistic control is a hallmark of Larkin’s poetry, and in “An Arundel Tomb” it is further embodied in its rhythm and rhyme patterns. The poem is constructed largely in iambic tetrameter – four unstressed/stressed feet per line – and with an explicit, complicated rhyme scheme – ABBCAC – imposed consistently on each of the seven, five-line stanzas. This carefully structured delivery provides a predestined feel to the ending of the poem as though we are headed there unavoidably and naturally like the unfolding of the petals of a dark flower.
The rhyme scheme is complicated and explicit – with many true rhymes, that is, rhyming words that sound exactly the same like ‘blurred’ and ‘absurd’ or ‘pleat’ and ‘feet’. These ring clearly through the poem and create a feel something like a child’s nursery rhyme. And children’s nursery rhymes are usually designed to make palatable their delivery of some dangerous or dire idea – appropriate for “An Arundel Tomb”. But one important exception to this is the use of a flattened half rhyme delivering the final, colliding message of the last verse with ‘prove’ and ‘love’: “…and to prove...” (40) “…What will survive of us is love.” (42).
Larkin’s typical technical care and ability with language are ever-present in “An Arundel Tomb”.
Images
Tomb of Richard Fitzalan, 10th earl of Arundel, in Chichester Cathedral
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10761620/Why-Philip-Larkin-was-almost-right-about-love.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/2rpfij/tomt_a_poem_about_love/
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