This pun is also used in ‘An Arundel tomb’ in the first stanza.
Side by side their faces blurred,
The count and countess lie in stone.
Here Larkin uses the pun to suggest whether or not the count and countess actually loved each other or whether this was just an act and their love was only perceived by their friends and family. This is shown in the third stanza.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see.
Larkin uses bleak metaphors to convey his doubts about love in ‘Talking in bed’.
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
This sentence talks to me of problems building up in the relationship that will come to a head in the near future.
Outside, the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky.
Here Larkin uses another metaphor. ‘The wind’s incomplete unrest’ reveals the unease felt round each other and the ‘incomplete’ is almost like there is something missing from the relationship. I think this is Larkin’s way of talking of a loveless relationship and this sparks off anger as conveyed in the following sentence. The build up of tension in the relationship flares up at times and the metaphor of clouds, to me, is the clouding of their relationship because of this lack of love. This is also shown in the final stanza;
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind
Or not untrue and not unkind.
This final stanza shows the deterioration of communication between the couple. Larkin says it is hard to find kind words or unkind words and so sees the relationship at its end.
In the third stanza, Larkin says something very interesting.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation.
This is a very lonely statement because although they are together, they have isolated themselves from each other perhaps in an attempt to block out the fact they are living a lie by being together.
In an ‘Arundel Tomb’, we see a slightly surprising line in which Larkin seems to be moved by.
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand,
Here we see another side of Larkin that perhaps thinks that their love was true because of the loving act of holding hands. The use of the word ‘tender’ is also surprising because it is such a gentle word unlike some of Larkin’s bleaker metaphors.
In the final stanza we see Larkin being as positive as possibl e about love.
The stone fidelity they hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon,
The word ‘hardly’ suggests that their love wasn’t quite meaningful but now together in stone they have no choice but to be together, whether or not they meant it to be like that .
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Here I believe Larkin is saying that if anything survives it is love but nothing survives after we die. He is trying to say that it would be nice if love did survive but the love that has survived in this poem is the love that is set in stone and Larkin wonders whether or not this was real love or something comprehended by friends.
In the poem ‘Wild Oats’ we see another approach to love told in a story with the characters of ‘bosomy rose’ and ‘specs’. This poem shows Larkin’s view of how love is unreliable and he speaks of it in a bittersweet way.
