To view more poems I have examined, click HERE.
Funeral Blues
by W.H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
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.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
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 poem is one of the most well-known funeral elegies of all time, largely due to its use in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. Auden’s work is 16 lines (four quatrains), with no set meter, but with each stanza having an AABB rhyme scheme.
The message of the poem is straight-forward. It’s an expression of profound grief and despair. The title explains the situation and the first two stanzas provide instructions for the world.
The first stanza lets us know that the occasion is solemn. The Speaker asks everyone to go above and beyond normal measures to create silence. This has the effect of making the world feel as though it has joined the Speaker in stopping. Moments of silence are also a show of respect, after someone has passed, and these measures indicate the deceased deserves every bit of it that can be given and more.
By including in the first line of the second stanza, a direction toward aeroplanes (not customarily a group that pays much attention to funerals, except perhaps those of heads of state), the Speaker immediately clues the Reader into the fact that the funeral is for someone very important. Then asking the airplanes to write a message takes that farther – as nothing of the sort is done even for world leaders. You might be inclined to wonder whether this is intended to be funny, or not, but that is then clarified further in the third stanza.
There is nothing funny here. The Speaker tells us how important the deceased is. He was everything.
The final stanza lets us feel the Speaker’s grief. He wants blackness and oblivion.
The video below is the scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral where the poem is recited.
