"An Arundel Tomb" by Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was an English poet who died in 1985 and wrote poems, according to POL, in a "stubbornly old fashioned manner". He focused on melancholy and dire themes, but often brilliantly (and shockingly) incorporated humor into his poetry.

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, 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His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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 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 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.

The sentiment of this poem is obvious in the last stanza. It's pretty straightforward and easy to follow, but so artfully crafted in sextets with a structured rhyme scheme and wonderful diction. This poem would be beautiful on its own, but becomes so much more so when put in context: the poet wrote this reflection after seeing the real Arundel tomb in England. It is a wonderful example of ekphrasis, writing based on the emotion one gets from an image. The tomb really is there, and the poet was moved enough to story it with his words. These two were buried next to each other and the sculptor put their hands together, instead of at their sides or on their torsos in traditional form. The poem reflects on how this moment is memorialized, their tomb made to sit in a museum for viewers to see and wonder at. "Only an attitude remains" -- this expresses the sentiment that, although the tomb itself is an product of antiquity, the love that is illustrated by the sculpture and by the two persons never changes.

http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/177058
The "Real" Arundel Tomb