Listen to the poem being read by John Hannah in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Here is a song on the poem called Stop all the Clocks.
Stop all the
clocks, cut off the telephone, a
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, a
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum b
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. b
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, a
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum b
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. b
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.
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.
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.
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.
ABOUT THE
POET
W H Auden was born in 1907 in New York and died
in Vienna in 1973.
TITLE
Blues – could refer to a depressed mood
It also suggests
the kind of mourning or sorrow often found in popular music associated with
African Americans (a slow, sad musical piece).
STRUCTURE
Even from the title, one can
deduce that the poem is an elegy.
An elegy serves to mourn the loss of a loved
one; but, can sometimes be about different types of feelings of sadness or a
general sense of loss.
There are four stanzas, each
consisting of four lines.
Many lines are written in
iambic pentameter, a standard of elegies.
Every stanza follows an aabb rhyme scheme.
THEME
The obvious theme of the poem
is death and the grief that goes with it.
Throughout the poem, Auden
makes a compelling statement about the devastating effects that the death of a
loved one has on those left behind.
The theme of dependency is
also a feature in the poem.
TONE
The tone of the poem is one of
grief.
The poem is serious and
depressing as it is about the mourning of a loved one. Some of the words that set
this tone are mourners, moaning,
dead, doves and black. There is no change in the tone of the poem,
except that it progressively becomes more saddening.
LINE BY
LINE ANALYSIS
STANZA 1 (the speaker demands a
domestic response)
Private grief
Note all the imperative verbs throughout the
poem.
Nowhere is there anything in
this stanza to convey grief or sadness that is personal. If anything, the
imagery conveys nothing but a determined attitude to do the perfunctory. To
maintain the proper form and structure that society expects at someone’s death.
Line 1: Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Once
people thought it bad luck for a clock to be running with a dead person
present—for example, at a wake. It was an ancient custom to stop the clock in the house when a person died. There were two
reasons for this:
·
In Victorian times, when an important person
died and there was a clock in the room, you had to stop the clock at the death
hour. They believed that when a person died, time stood still for them and a
new period of existence started without time. Note that the ticking of the
clock represented the heartbeat of the important person. The speaker cleverly alludes to the idea that in death, time
ceases (at least for the dead person).
·
Secondly, it served as a reminder of the time
of death to all the mourners who would visit the home when someone died.
Cut off the
telephone – could represent modern life and business and the
speaker wants the interruption of information to stop. This implies silence.
Telephones must be cut off
since no further communication is desired.
At the time this poem was written, telephones were new inventions. For the speaker of the poem, they likely symbolise the modern world itself—its innovations, its speed, and
the sudden ease with which people could communicate with each other.
Line 2:
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
If a dog
barked in the background at a funeral, it was once believed that more people
would be dying. In any case, a barking dog, when the speaker is overcome
with grief, would be annoying.
Line 3: Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Silence the
pianos – refers to raucous parties and celebrations. These must
cease.
With muffled
drum – the ceremonious way in which the coffins were brought
out.
The speaker wants the focus
on proper mourning for the deceased person.
The “Muffled Drum” is
still a traditional custom at military funerals.
Muffled -
This can be meant in a literal and figurative sense: literally, the sound
emitted from the drum may not be loud and clear. Figuratively, it is an echo of
how the speaker feels and perceives the world around him at this moment in
time. It is a mournful beat.
Lines 1 to 3 indicate a
disconnect between the way the speaker is reacting to the death of his friend
and the way the regular sounds and activities of life are going on. The speaker
is isolated in his pain from regular life now that the person has died. This
justifies his firm commands.
Line 4: Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
STANZA TWO (the poet demands a
public response)
Public grief
Stanza 2 suggests that
the dead man may be an important public official.
The second stanza is
just a continuation of the preparations being made in the first stanza.
However, we go from the trivial to the exaggerated. These requests are full of hyperbole.
Line 5:
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
An excessive and
unreasonable request.
Personification – the aeroplanes moan. The aeroplanes
are moaning as if expressing their sadness over the person being grieved
for.
Onomatopoeia – moaning is the sound
made by the engines of the planes flying with a deliberate purpose. The droning
sound makes it appear as if the plane is affected by this death and is mourning
as well.
Line 6: Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Scribbling – traditionally called skywriting. It is accomplished with a
single aeroplane flying through the sky to form
letters. The white smoke (without getting too technical) is emitted like writing across the sky and it is
composed of a special combination of oils which is emitted through the plane's
exhaust system.
Personification – the planes are scribbling
(quick and untidy writing).
It is an announcement
to the world of the passing away of the person. It is the news and reality of
the person’s passing covering the sky and, as a result, covering everything
below it like a blanket.
“He Is Dead” – is capitalised and in inverted
commas to accentuate the statement as a fact as if a piece of hard-hitting news
that is hard to conceive.
The capitalisation of the word He is found many times in the Bible. It is in this way
that the poet is trying to relate to the person who just passed away to
divinity. Nonetheless, it indicates that the person who has passed away is
important to the speaker.
Line 7: Put crepe bows round the white necks of
the public doves,
Crepe –
paper bows
This denotes that
the doves have been decorated in an artificial show of mourning.
An absurd request
– he wants the public to mourn with him.
Public doves
– these are the doves that are found in the public parks and town squares.
Everyone sees them so this absurd request is a deliberate public announcement
which no one must miss.
Doves –
symbols of peace and associated with funerals
Line 8:
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
Black –
the colour associated with mourning and
represents the speaker's desire for public despair and mourning.
One’s
grief dwarfs the concerns of the rest of the world,
STANZA THREE (the poet’s response)
It is a beautifully
evocative section that illustrates the bond between the speaker and the
deceased person.
Note the theme of
completeness in the language, which covers all four primary compass directions
and all seven days of the week. Similarly, noon and
midnight together cover, by synecdoche (parts standing for the whole), all hours of the day.
The stanza, at the same time, reveals the tragedy of human life, which is that
everyone must die and that almost everyone will experience being severed from a
loved one.
Line 9:
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
Metaphor – the deceased person is compared to a
compass. This suggests that he gave the speaker direction and a sense of
constancy.
Repetition – with nine uses of “my” (possessive pronoun) in three lines, the speaker
takes possession of his subject.
My - a sense of ownership
The deceased was
the speaker’s compass of life. Now without the deceased person, the poet has lost his direction. It
conveys a sense of helplessness as one is unable to revive
the dead. It is in this sense that the poet is now spiritually lost.
North, South, East and West – covers the globe. Paraphrased, this line would read: “He
was my World”, therefore the speaker’s everything!
Line 10:
My working week and my Sunday rest,
The use of everyday
terms, especially ones found in routines such as Working week and Sunday rest portray the level
of intimacy these two individuals had. They were always in contact every day of
the week.
Note the contrast
between working and rest. In other words, the deceased person was central to
the speaker’s activities.
Line 11:
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
Noon …midnight – refers to the two opposite times of the
day. It suggests that the deceased defined the speaker’s sense of time.
My talk - he
influenced the speaker’s communication; every conversation was about him.
My song – he influenced
the speaker’s temperament (attitude) and mood.
Line 12:
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
I thought
that – an unpleasant truth
Last forever - there is a timeless notion that love
conquers all; that it will last eternally.
I was wrong – anti-climax. Note the build-up of lines 9 to 11 and then the crashing
“I was wrong” which reinforces the speaker’s disappointment
or sudden depression now that the person he loves has passed away.
This holds an interesting idea.
Why would love not transcend death? Does one stop loving after someone has
passed away?
Alternatively, it could merely indicate that the
poet would no longer be able to reciprocate any of the love that he previously
gave to the individual. Perhaps the plot was
considering love as one of ‘give and take’ rather than just the speaker
‘giving’. In that sense, love has died for the individual.
Caesura – A stop or pause in a metrical line,
often marked by punctuation (note the colon here) or by a grammatical boundary,
such as a phrase or clause.
Auden reinforces this
sense of disillusionment with a caesura (a break in rhythm) in the middle of
this line, separating the speaker’s previous romantic illusions from the harsh
reality of the present.
The effect of the
caesura is to emphasise the impact of “I was wrong”.
STANZA FOUR (the poet’s demands from
the natural world)
In this stanza, the
poet uses hyperbole – extreme exaggeration.
He is requesting the absurd and ridiculous. However, it is used to indicate his
extreme sorrow.
It is here that we see
the emotional breakdown of the poet as his grief comes to a climax.
Note the use of metaphor in nature.
Stars represent the aspirations and
guidance that we have in life
The Sun and
Moon are imagery for the Heart and Mind
Ocean conveys a great depth in emotion
and feeling and to some extent, spirit.
There is a sense of irony here, for the rejection of these
metaphors show that there are no more emotions worth feeling, but the will to
reject these feelings show anything but hopelessness.
Tone of despair
Everything that gives
light and stands for life, radiance, and beauty is everything the speaker has
shut out. All of these images are dark and full of despair, heavy with the
emotions of the speaker.
The beauty of nature cannot
be appreciated anymore.
Line 13:
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Note the stars are
symbols of romantic love
There is no need
for the stars to shine or to give direction. The speaker wants them to mourn.
Line 14: Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
The natural
function of both the moon and the sun are superfluous now.
Line 15:
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
An unreasonable
request – everything must disappear.
Line 16: For nothing now can ever come to any good.
If any of the elements
were allowed to continue operating in their natural order, it would belittle
the speaker’s grief.
It is in this way that the poem
ends on a sad note, not only for the deceased but also for the poet, who has
died spiritually in the process and is forced to continue living as a hollow
shell without the deceased individual in question, which we may interpret as
being far worse than actual death.
REFERENCES
