Philip Larkin reads “An Arundel Tomb” = Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie

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His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.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.
Philip Larkin lived from August 9, 1922, to December 2, 1985.
Larkin is my favorite poet of post-WWII England. (As for prose. my favorite is Anthony Powell--I'm not getting off topic since Larkin and Powell knew each other and had mutual respect.)
Larkin's first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1946.
I admire his verse but also like his advocacy of traditional jazz. Larkin liked the same music that I admire!!
His verse was strikingly original--at the same time, I detect in some poems the influence of William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Hardy.
He earned a living as a librarian in various places, including Leicester's University College Library (from 1946 to 1950) and the Brynmor Jones Library at University of Hull in Hull, England (from 1955 to 1985).
He has a soothing, articulate voice--he reads each line with care and meaning! I wonder if his accent indicates where he was raised in England?
Could that voice be mistaken for someone from London?