The Arundel Tomb

The Arundel Tomb
Set in the north aisle of Chichester Cathedral the tomb was brought from Lewes Priory sometime after its dissolution in 1537.
A tomb chest on top of which lays the recumbent figures of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster. Richard Fitzalan is dressed as a knight of the period and Eleanor wears the dress of a noblewoman with veil and wimple. 
At the beginning of the 19th century the tomb was in need of restoration: the two figures were separated and the arms of Richard and Eleanor’s right hand were missing. A restoration was thus undertaken by Edward Richardson who restored the arms to show husband and wife with their right hands joined.
The tomb is best known for inspiring Philip Larkin’s 1955 poem, An Arundel Tomb which ruminates on the transitory nature of objects, people and material things, it describes the poet's response to seeing the tomb on a visit to Chichester Cathedral.

The last line of the last verse is the most often quoted part

An Arundel Tomb

By Philip Larkin

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, until
It 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His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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 effigy
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 supine 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 skeins  
Above their scrap of history,  
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into  
Untruth. The stone fidelity
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.