FUNERAL BLUES, W.H.

AUDEN

The poem can be found under 2 different titles, Funeral Blues and Stop all the clocks.
The poem is four stanzas long, has a very simple rhyme scheme and each line rhymes
with the one preceding it. Every line is approximately 10 lines long although there is no
consistency and the poem talks about the loss of a loved one.
In the first stanza, the writer makes use of imperatives various times. He uses
imperatives like “stop, prevent, silence or bring” which leaves the stanza with a
sarcastic/mocking tone and makes him sound like he is even cross. “Stop all the clocks”
is an old formal custom, because once people thought that it was bad luck for a clock to
be running with a dead person present. And in the third line he asks to stop all the pianos
and to play some muffled drums, this could mean three different things; the first one is
that he either wants this funeral to be a military style funeral, to make us feel his pain
through the music or that either he wants to make the drums sound like the sound of
the mourners coming to the coffin it makes me think this because the next line he is
asking to let the coffin out so that the mourners can get near and watch.
In the whole first stanza, we also need to bear in mind that he says all this in a formal
way. We know this because you cannot find anything direct here to convey the grief or
sadness, this is personal. The lines in this stanza are similar in length. Line one has 10
syllables and leaves it clear that we are reading an example of iambic pentameter
whereas in line two we get 12 syllables.
In the second stanza, lines five and six we get some examples of hyperbole and
personification in its full sense when we read “Scribbling in the sky the message He is
Dead”. This is a personification, because they’re not really going to drive some planes
saying that he is dead and a hyperbole considering that someone normal wouldn’t do
this, plus he makes a mixture of privacy and public knowledge here he mixes both things
when he before asked for the phones to be turned off and now he is implying that he
would like the message “he is dead” to be known by everyone. He keeps it in a private
way because he doesn’t say a name like “Carlos is dead” he just keeps it confidential.
Which makes me think about a modus of keeping the reader interested to know who
“he” is. On the next two and last lines of this stanza we get more examples of public
knowledge, this makes me think WHO IS HE TALKING ABOUT? Is he so important to
writer? Is he a famous icon like a minister, actor or clever doctor who helped in the cure
of some disease? Why do he want even the “public doves” to remember him? This whole
two lines are hyperboles.
The third stanza is my personal favourite because it is very intense, honest, and personal.
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.”
In this stanza, we get clear that he is no one important to the rest of the world, but that
for the writer he was everything, and clearly shows that there was a love relationship
between this two guys. We know this because it’s not normal to love a friend or a family
member that way just because you love them differently, not the same as someone you
love in a relationship, and leaves it crystal clear when he says that he thought love would
last forever but he was wrong. This makes us think that this two persons loved each
other very deeply because he is lost without him when he says that he was all his
pathways in life and his 24/7hours, working week and Sunday rest, but all this are
metaphors because I’m certain and sure that they weren’t stuck together so much that
they didn’t have one moment alone. Although it may sound comic the way he expressed
his loss it is a poetic way of saying to the rest that “hey, although you don’t know him as
much as I did I loved him and I miss him”. Finally, when he announces that he thought
love would last forever but he was wrong he is someway trying to make us think by
saying that OUR loved ones would also die because no one lives forever and that
EVERYTHING ends. Happy or sad everything ends.

Lastly, we’ve got the fourth stanza and again I do think this one is one of the most
powerful and profound after the third one but I consider that there is a reason here in
the last strophe he expresses all he’s feelings saying all the noted before and vented
himself here and said what he really is feeling.
‘The stars are not wanted now; put out everyone,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.’
This is hyperbole because no one could ever do the said before unless an apocalypse
occurred. The meaning of this is that he is trying to make us understand that he doesn’t
want to move on, not without him. It can also be a way of him expressing his grief as he
cannot even see this fascinating and romantic images like the sun or the ocean.
This last line of the poem independent to all the explained before ends up the poem
with a mope and it sounds whammy and really that is something that I personally liked
because the typical thing to do when ending a sad poem about a dead person is ending
it with a hope for the future and in this poem, we don’t get that. The writer ends up the
poem very pessimistically something that’s not normal in this type of poem, normally,
when someone dies the writer ends up with a view of a positive and hopeful future,
some small optimistic part but in this poem, we don’t the writer just sees a dark and
profound hiatus it doesn’t end with a little light ray.
To conclude I think that this poem shows grief and loss through another perspective and
in a very deep way that no one could possibly fully understand unless they experienced
losing a loved one and that really caused impact on me because I could feel his pain, loss
,grief and even anger and I could understand him at every moment even though
sometimes he was a bit over the top but that made me realize that everyone takes things
differently to others and that maybe when some I love leaves me I feel one way different
to for example W.H Auden. He made me realize to not judge people to quickly for the
ways they react when things happen.