An Arundel Tomb

Theme:

 

This poem is a reflection on death, the passage of time and love, and how it can be eternal and last years in memories. The poem questions whether love rises above all things or if it is just a display, a distorted interpretation of history that just shows the ideals. This is called equivocation, an almost truth but not the whole truth.

 

Content:

 

This poem is the tomb of two medieval people that have had their love statued on the tomb where they lay, with them holding hands. Larkin highlights that the love and the meaning of this tomb can be interpreted differently by generations through the years. The poem is an ekphrasis which is a graphic description of a work of art, Larkin visited the tomb and pays tribute to them in this poem.

 

Structure:

 

The poem has the rhyme scheme ABBCAC and the poem is made up of seven verses with six lines each.

 

Analysis:

 

• Stanza one and two describe the tomb. The couple lay 'side by side', which makes them seem equal though this is untrue for the reality of their time. Their faces are 'blurred' and worn away, unrecognisable and anonymous. Time has eroded their faces, and natures takes away their identity until they become faceless. Their 'proper habits' suggest their rich lifestyle, and the tomb is a display of wealth and high status however this vague and fading. The man in is 'jointed armour' and she in a 'stiffened pleat'. Larkin finds the dog at their feet 'absurd'. Dogs represent loyalty and companionship which is how the tomb is conveyed by viewers.
• 'Such plainness of the pre-baroque' is a reference to an era in terms of art. The persona thinks of this tomb as plain until they see the 'left-hand gauntlet' a dress glove for armour holding his right hand glove. His right hand is holding his wife's right hand, a sign of their eternal love. 'A sharp tender shock' is an oxymoron, pleasant surprise that the Earl is dressed like a warrior but is soft and caring. 'Holding her hand' is alliteration, that their love is memorialized in stone and as long as the stone stays so does their love.
• In Stanza 3 Larkin describes how the couple didn't plan for their tomb to become a famous monument of love. A 'effigy' is a representation of a person in the form of a sculpture. Their 'faithfulness' was just for friends to appreciate. They didn't except it to be an emblem and the 'sculptor's sweet commissioned grace thrown off in helping to prolong' suggests if the couple knew they might have reconsidered commisionning it.
• In the later stanza Larkin talks about time. 'Their supine stationary voyage', lying down on one's back their death is displayed as the bodies lay still. The voyage references to the afterlife and life after death. 'Soundless damage' is an oxymoron, that time and nature will erode the tomb slowly. 'To look, not read' suggests that the people that visit this tomb don't know who the people are, and just see it as a display of love. They acknowledge but don't observe the past, people have to analyse the way it looks to understand. 'Rigidly' the statues remain linked together.
• 'Lengths and breadths' describe how they will stay there forever, that their love will be eternal. The seasons pass, 'snow fell, undated' and 'light each summer thronged the glass', these weathers symbol purity and cleansing. The 'birdcalls' imply new life around them but this is contrasted with the 'bone-riddled ground' which is the graves in the cemtery/cathedral. 'The endless altered people came'. People's views can be changed by seeing the love displayed by the tomb or by the location of the tomb and religion.
• 'Washing at their identity', cleansing them and removing the old past. The couple is 'helpless' because they are dead and have no control over what happens to them and their tomb now, in 'unarmorial age', there is no protection anymore.
• 'Above their scrap of history', suggests that they only hold one era of time and a tiny memory remains, one that will be slowly forgotten. 'Only an attitude remains', the attitude of love, the thought that love will pull them through and that it indures. 'Time has transfigured them into untruth', changed their looks, and no longer the truth. The tomb was meant to be what they wanted to be in the afterlige but the 'fidelity' the faithfulness of this has gone. 'Their final blazon', a top to toe description (poetic device) is all that they are. The last line 'our almost-instinct almost true: what will survive of us is love' can be seen in two ways. It can be optimistic, a romantic notion of momental meaning, that love will conquer all including death. However Larkin has a negative view so the poem can be interpreted that it is a bleak realism that people see the tomb for only what it is, they are nice to look at but it was the sculptor that made them like that not the couple. The tomb is a delusion, another person's interpretation of the couple.