Funeral Blues

~ Wystan Hugh Auden

How this poem came out to be a poem…
British poet W.H. Auden composed "Funeral
Blues," which was initially made available in
1938. The speaker has lost a crucial person,
but the rest of the world doesn't slow down or
pause to show its sympathy, it just goes on as
if nothing has changed. This poem is about
the enormity of loss. The speaker requests
that the rest of the world grieve as well since
he views this attitude as a form of filthy pain.
 Translation of the poem:
Original: Translated into Modern English:
Turn off the clocks and cut the telephone cords. Give the dog a juicy
bone so it stops barking. Make the pianos stop playing and then
bring out the coffin and the mourners, accompanied only by a quiet
drum.

Let airplanes fly sadly over us and write “He is Dead” in the sky. Put
black bows around the white necks of the pigeons in the street. Make
the traffic cops wear black gloves.

He was everything to me: all the points of the compass. He was my

work week and my day off. He was every hour of my day, present in
everything I spoke or sang. I thought our love would never end. That
wasn't true.

I don’t want to see the stars anymore: put out their lights. Take the
moon out of the sky and take the sun apart. Pour the ocean down the
drain and sweep the forest away. Nothing good can ever happen
again.
 Poem Summary
‘Funeral Blues‘ by W.H. Auden is
about the power of grief and the way
that it influences people differently.
For someone like the speaker who has
suffered a loss, the world is
transformed. But to everyone else,
nothing changes. Time doesn’t slow
down and no one cares what’s
happening. The indifference of the
world plagues the speaker in this
poem. They plead with the world to
feel as they do, understand his grief,
and even participate in it.
Rhyme Scheme
 Poetic techniques
Being a Quatrain, Funeral Blues, consist of 3 main
poetic techniques. First one being an Anaphora,
which means repetition of word or phrases in a
single line of a poem; Anaphora Example from the
poem: “My” at the start of lines two and three of the
third stanza.
Second, it has an alliteration too (words in a line
starting with same letter or tone); Alliteration
Example: first line of the first stanza: “the clocks,
cut off” or “working week” in the second line of the
third stanza.
And lastly, hyperbole (exaggeration); Hyperbole
Example: “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun”
from the last stanza.
 Poem Analysis (First Stanza)
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.

Stopping the clock here means two different thing. First, the ticking noise of it, and
second, the time. When a person exits another person’s life, the first person want to the to
either go back or stop. Here, stopping the time also might mean ending his life because he
might be in shock of losing his partner. The first stanza let’s the reader know about the
theme of the poem, Silence, because the speaker has written this poem to sympathize for
the person he has lost and would like a little silence at the moment. The speaker ends the
stanza in quite and interesting way, “let the mourners come.” This technically refers as a
invite to the funeral of the lost person here.
 Poem Analysis (Second Stanza)
Let airplanes 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.

This stanza goes in pretty deep as it exabits that the speaker does not care about his
life now and wants to go away from all the memories he has made with the person
who passed away because it reminds it of him. In the last two lines, he shows that
he needs social and moral support now because if he leaves his life in his own
hands, no one knows what he will do. In simple words, he’s seeking attention and
needs support.
 Poem Analysis (Third Stanza)
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, the writer informs the reader that the important person he has lost was
his everything, his start of the morning till the end of the night ; the person he loved
talking to & the person he wrote songs and poems about. He got so close to him that
he started to believe ‘forever’ is a thing, but indeed, the life had to prove him wrong,
so it did. Nothing’s Forever. And now, the speaker is lost… Physically and
Emotionally, without that person. This Stanza also indicates that physical attraction
could anyhow be gone, but if a person’s emotionally attached to another person, then
losing him/her is worse than death.
 Poem Analysis (Forth Stanza)
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.

The tone of the speaker completely takes a round here. In the first 3 stanzas it
showed how his partner mattered the most to him, but now the only thing he cares
about is nothing. The Poem has taken over another theme in the last stanza,
Darkness. He has lost hope in life, he believes now living will be pointless and
what’s even more pointless is loving again.
 What do I think about the poem?
Frankly speaking, I have never even heard the name of this poem or the
writer until today, but I’m pretty sure, after today, I’m going to fall in
love with the poet, and indeed the writer.
I have never seen a more depressing and relatable poem than this.
Personally, I believe the last two stanzas were the best as they would
make the reader feel the emotions of the writer very accurately, and
indeed, it made me sentimental too.
One last reason I loved the poem was because I felt some connection
between mine and the writers thought, especially in the 3 rd stanza’s last
line because the mindset of mine is pretty similar to his.
 Bibliography
• https://poemanalysis.com/w-h-auden/funeral-blues/
• https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/w-h-auden/funeral-blues-sto
p-all-the-clocks#:~:text=%E2%80%9CFuneral%20Blues%E
2%80%9D%20was%20written%20by,as%20if%20nothing%
20has%20changed
.
• https://www.etsy.com/in-en/listing/690000193/funeral-blues-
by-wystan-hugh-auden