This is my first encounter with Larkin's work (apart from being familiar with the opening line of This be the Verse, who isn't?) and I find his open ended pessimism intriguing. The final line of An Arundel Tomb has been quoted as yet another comment on the immortality of love, "what will survive of us is love", but I believe this is exactly what Larkin was criticising.
The poem narrates a visit to the tomb of two old lovers with "faces blurred" who have been visited by "endless altered people" since their burial. The narrator, who may possibly be Larkin himself, describes how with "sharp tender shock" he notices that the man's hand is "withdrawn, holding her hand." The "tender" shock originally suggests a pleasant surprise because seeing the two deceased lovers united in death is touching. However, Larkin continues to suggest that this detail is exactly that, "just a detail", and merely the work of a "sculptor's sweet commissioned grace." On the contrary, the second line of the poem "the earl and countess lie in stone" suggests the love shared isn't genuine, because the word "lie" has a double meaning.
Larkin is making the point that love is not immortal, and ends with death. This could be interpreted as a pessimistic view which differs to the representation of love by the romantics, who emphasised the immortality of love. For example, Shakespeare writes in his Sonnet 18 that as long as his verse survives it will "give life to thee" and "nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade". In other words death cannot claim his loves beauty. Larkin parodies this idea in his final two lines: "and to prove our almost-instinct almost true: what will survive of us is love." Therefore it's our "almost-instinct" to believe that love is eternal, and this is "almost true", but it is not true according to Larkin, which demonstrates his pessimism.
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