[756] An Arundel Tomb

Guest poem submitted by Ann Ang, <lightscence@>:

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His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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.

	-- Philip Larkin

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 #503, "MCMXIV"
Poem #544, "Toads"
All of which can be found at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html

From: Sweetsexy4eva@

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

From: "Rupert Lawler" <rupert2@>

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.

From: "Andrew Felton" <andy444@>

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

From: "stephen leake" <stephen.leake1@>

Please correct the word 'finality' to 'fidelity' in the final stanza!!!!

  Thankyou-
www.writesight.com/writers/sleake

Stephen Leake