What happens in Chapter 1 of An Arundel Tomb?
Philip Larkin's "An Arundel Tomb" begins with a detailed, almost archaeological depiction of a medieval earl and countess lying beside each other in effigy on their stone tomb in Chichester Cathedral. The speaker lists the specifics of their carved figures — including their armor, robes, and Latin names — before pausing at one unusual detail: the earl's gauntleted hand is bare, and it holds the countess's hand. The poem then shifts through time, showing how seasons and centuries have worn away the tomb's sharper details, turning heraldic specifics into smooth stone. Visitors come and go over the years, with each generation interpreting the clasped hands in its own way. In the final stanzas, the speaker reflects on what this gesture has come to signify — not necessarily what the sculptor meant, but what time has shaped it into. The poem concludes with its most famous and debated lines, where the speaker acknowledges that what the figures represent is a symbol of love's endurance, while also questioning whether that symbol ever reflected the truth. The poem stands on its own, transitioning from ekphrasis to elegy to a quiet philosophical uncertainty within seven stanzas.
Analysis
Larkin constructs the poem on a structural irony: the more he examines the tomb, the less certain its meaning becomes. The opening stanzas use a deliberately flat, inventory-like language — "their faces blurred, / The nameless earl and countess" — mimicking the neutrality of a museum guide, only to be subtly unsettled by the striking image of the joined hands. This reflects Larkin's signature approach: a mundane detail that opens up into deeper, metaphysical insights.
The motif of erosion serves a dual purpose. Physically, time erases the effigy's heraldic clarity, rendering it illegible; emotionally, it erases the historical couple's true relationship, leaving only the gesture behind. Larkin is wary of sentimentality in this instance — the poem continually questions its own comforts. The penultimate stanza's shift to the plural "us" involves the reader in the longing to find evidence of love's endurance, making the final line's qualification feel directed at us personally rather than just being a philosophical statement.
Tonal control stands out as the poem's greatest craft achievement. Larkin transitions from the cool, almost archival tone of the opening through a middle section infused with elegiac warmth, before the closing lines introduce a syntactical hesitation — "almost instinct," "almost true" — that prevents the sentiment from settling. The famous last line, "What will survive of us is love," functions as an affirmation that the poem has already, with care, undermined. It becomes a monument to ambivalence, as intricately crafted as the tomb it describes.
Key quotes from Chapter 1
“They would not think to lie so long.”
Larkin imagines the medieval couple's obliviousness to their own posterity, introducing the poem's central tension between intention and legacy.
“Time has transfigured them into / Untruth.”
The speaker names the poem's central problem directly: the passage of centuries has made the tomb's gesture mean something its makers may never have intended.
“What will survive of us is love.”
The poem's closing line, simultaneously the most affirmative and the most ironised statement in the poem, qualified in the preceding line by the phrase 'almost true.'
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 1
- effigy
- A carved stone likeness of a person, typically placed on top of a tomb to represent the deceased lying in repose.
- earl
- A British nobleman of high rank, sitting between a marquess and a viscount in the aristocratic hierarchy.
- countess
- The wife or widow of an earl, or a woman who holds the rank of earl in her own right.
- gauntleted
- Wearing a gauntlet — a heavy armored glove made of metal or leather, worn as part of medieval battle armor.
- heraldic
- Relating to the formal system of symbols, coats of arms, and insignia used to identify noble families, often carved or painted on tombs and monuments.
- Latin
- Written in the ancient Roman language used throughout medieval Europe for official, religious, and commemorative inscriptions on monuments and tombs.
- transfigured
- Completely changed in form or appearance, often in a way that distorts or elevates the original beyond recognition.
- Untruth
- A falsehood or misrepresentation — here, the idea that time's erosion has turned the tomb's original meaning into something misleading or untrue.
- lie
- To rest or recline in a flat, horizontal position — used here of the stone figures lying stretched out on the tomb, not of telling a falsehood.
- survive
- To continue to exist or endure after everything else has faded, decayed, or been forgotten.
- instinct
- A natural, inborn impulse or tendency that guides feeling or behavior without conscious reasoning.
- almost-instinct
- A coined compound suggesting an urge or belief that feels natural and deeply felt but falls just short of being a genuine, reliable instinct — implying it is partly wishful thinking.