An Arundel Tomb

By Phillop Larkin

Side by sideSide by side To see a recent photograph of this tomb of the Earl and Countess of Arundel that Larkin is describing, click here. , their faces blurred,    The earl and countess lie in stone,    Their proper habitshabits Clothes 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 pre-baroque In Larkin’s pronunciation, the phrase rhymes with 'shock.' The Baroque period, exemplified by ornamentation, followed the Renaissance. This tomb was sculpted in the Middle Ages.    Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left-hand gauntletgauntlet An armored glove, worn in the Middle Ages, still    Clasped empty in the other; and    One sees, with a sharp tender shock,    His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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 effigyeffigy A sculptured likeness 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 supinesupine On their backs 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 skeinsskeins Used figuratively, a skein is a quantity of thread     Above their scrap of history,    Only anOnly an When first published in June 1956 in the London Magazine, the line began: Only their attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into    Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be    Their final blazonblazon Both a coat of arms, and a public proclamation, and to prove    Our almost-instinct almost true:    What will survive of us is love.