1. Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden

2. Funeral Blues 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.

3. 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.
W.H. Auden

4. W.H. Auden Born 21 February 1907, died 29 September 1973)
An English poet, who later became an American citizen.
He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes, poems on cultural and psychological themes and poems on religious themes. 
He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family.
He attended English independent (or public) schools and studied English at Christ Church, Oxford

5. W.H. Auden
After a few months in Berlin in 1928–29 he spent five years (1930–35) teaching in English public schools, then travelled to Iceland and China in order to write books about his journeys.
In 1939 he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1946.
He taught from 1941 to 1945 in American universities, followed by occasional visiting professorships in the 1950’s.
From 1947 to 1957 he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia (Italy); from 1958 until the end of his life he wintered in New York (in Oxford in 1972–73) and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.

6. Summary:
This is in the style of a classical elegy, though it features informal language and objects of everyday life such as a telephone.
This mingling, writes one scholar,
“is a powerful modernist move, one which suggests that only by embracing the modern world can art come to terms with the complexities of human experience.”
The poem appears from the perspective of a man (seemingly the poet himself) deeply mourning the loss of a lover who has died.
The first two stanzas are about the poet’s desire for the public to acknowledge this death.
The final two stanzas are about his own private reaction to it.
He begins by calling for silence from the everyday objects of life—the telephone and the clocks—and the pianos, drums, and animals nearby.

7. Summary:
He doesn’t just want quiet, however; he wants his loss writ large.
He wants the life of his lover—seemingly a normal, average man—to be proclaimed to the world as noble and valuable.
He wants airplanes to write the message “He Is Dead” in the sky, crepe bows around doves, and traffic policemen wearing black gloves.
What seems unbearable to him is the thought that this man’s passing from life to death will be unmarked by anyone other than the poet.
The poem ‘Funeral Blues’ is a lament for a friend.
‘Blues’ is an American word for a sad song. Blue is a colour that we associate with sadness.

8. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Stanza One:
Easily accessible imagery, the use of modern everyday objects in the formal setting of the elegy.
A series of commands (imperatives) directing the world to cease activity and attend to this death
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.
First three lines build tension – climax on fourth line
The discourse of the funeral.
Wants/ needs the world to acknowledge this death with respect (silence)

9. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Stanza Two
Capital “H” denotes position of importance of the deceased to the poet.
Look at the word choice and how it fits in within the context of the poem.
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.
Begins with image of sky-writing; the poet wants the world to know about this death.
“Crepe bows… public doves” – wants public ceremony. (Continued in “…black cotton gloves”)
Poet wants visible commemoration

11. He was my North, my South, my East and West,
Repetition of “my” indicates how important the deceased was to the poet.
The list of ways in which he belonged to the poet indicate the importance to the poet – he was EVERYTHING to him.
Stanza Three
Compass-points – indicates that the deceased meant the whole world
The lover defines the poet’s sense of time; contrast “noon”/ “midnight”
Contrast “working”/ “rest” – He was central to the poet both when working and not.
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.
Line twelve is a contrast of romantic falsehood with unpleasant truth.
“I thought love would last forever” – simple, romantic statement. Cliché?
Caesura at the colon – places emphasis on the second part of the brutal contrast.
Human speech was defined through the lover: contrast “speech”/ “song”
Tension broken by short, simple sentence. “I was wrong”. This is an anti-climax to the romantic idea, showing the poet’s disappointment.
Enjambment creates sense of list constantly expanding and rolling on.

12. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Whole stanza creates powerful sense of the loss of meaning to the poet’s life.
Stanza Four
“stars” – romantic symbols (also of time) – “not wanted”.
“put out every one” – poet is asking the impossible – hyperbole to emphasis new sense of futility/ pessimism.
Poet returns to imperatives (commands)
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.
Requests for the impossible continue: “pack up the moon”/ “dismantle the sun” – these are romantic symbols – poet has no interest in love anymore.
“pour away the ocean”/ “sweep up the wood” – continues asking for the impossible. “oceans” and “wood” represent the land and the sea – he wants it all to disappear.
Final line is simple and harsh – shows the pessimism of the grieving poet.
End-stopped to create a sense of finality; of truth?

13. Questions:
To whom does the speaker address his poem? Refer to the poem for proof. What's the effect of this point of view? (4)
What is the effect of all of the poem's hyperbole? Does it make the speaker's grief seem more or less intense? Give reasons for your answers. (4)
Why does the speaker make so many references to the natural world? What's the effect of all the references to the moon and stars, etc.? (4)
What does the word “blues” refer to? (2)
Quote all the words in the poem that may be linked to the finality of death. (4)
What does the clock represent, Why does the poet use this image? (3)

14. Questions: What does the telephone represent? (2)
Who must know that someone close to the poet has died? Justify your response. (3)
How must the city react? (2)
How important was this person according to stanza 3? Give reasons and quotes from the poem to justify your answer. (4)
According to the poet, why can love not last forever? (2)
How does the poet feel in the last stanza, does his tone change during the poem? (3)