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"Funeral Blues" (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson) is a poem first published in 1936 by W. H. Auden.
Titles
The poem is unusual as in it is known by at least four other titles and may have first appeared in the verse play The Ascent of F-6 which Auden wrote with Christopher Isherwood in 1952. *. This can lead to confusion with those who are accustomed to calling it "Stop All The Clocks" but the title "Funeral Blues" is the name it is most commonly known by.
Poem
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 for ever; 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.
Critical Analysis
"Funeral Blues" is a simple - but devastatingly emotional - poem about death, isolation, emptyness and longing. In four verses but two halves it takes the reader through the journey of before the funeral (Stop all the clocks, Silence the pianos...), during the funeral (Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come...), after the funeral (He was my North, my South...) and the loneliness and anger that comes with it.
There are two distinct sides to the poem, the first two verses are about the time leading up to and during the funeral and the two verses after is how the subject was viewed by the author and an outpouring of grief to the reader about how nothing can or will, in the eyes of the author, ever be the same again.
Appearances
- "Funeral Blues" was the poem read by Matthew (John Hannah) at the funeral of his partner Gareth (Simon Callow) in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
- It has been set to music by composer Benjamin Britten.
External links
Scans from the 1940 edition of Another Time, containing "Funeral Blues":
"Funeral Blues"