Philip Larkin. An Arundel Tomb.

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, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlet, still   Clasped empty in the other; and   One sees, with a sharp tender shock,   His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.They would not think to lie so long.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 effigyWas 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 inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,   Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beginTo look, not read. Rigidly theyPersisted, linked, through lengths and breadths   Of time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the glass. A bright   Litter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-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 troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeins   Above their scrap of history,   Only an attitude remains:Time has transfigured them into   Untruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to be   Their final blazon, and to prove   Our almost-instinct almost true:   What will survive of us is love.