Funeral Blues
Funeral Blues - meaning Summary
Total Grief, Private Apocalypse
Auden's "Funeral Blues" expresses an intense, personal experience of mourning after a loved one's death. The speaker demands absolute public silence and ceremonial recognition while declaring the deceased the center of their world. Grief collapses ordinary measures of time and value; natural and civic order are imagined dismantled because, for the speaker, nothing retains meaning. The poem conveys overwhelming loss and the desire for the world to acknowledge it.
Read Complete AnalysesStop 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 woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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