Poetry for Students Vol. 10

Volume 10 139

Author Biography

W. H. Auden was born on February 21, 1907, in
York, England, to George (a physician) and Ros-
alie (a nurse) Auden. His father’s love of the
mythology of his Icelandic ancestors and his
mother’s strong religious beliefs would have a great
influence on Auden’s poetry. After being admitted
to Oxford University to study engineering, Auden
switched to the literature. His interest in science
would later be evident in his poetry. At Oxford Au-
den became an important member of a group of
writers that became known collectively as the “Ox-
ford Group,” and later as the “Auden Generation.”
This group, which included Stephen Spender, C.
Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice, often expressed
their decidedly leftist political views in their work.
Stephen Spender arranged in 1928 for the publica-
tion of Auden’s first work, Poems.That work, com-
mercially published in 1930, coupled with Auden’s
next collection, The Oratorspublished in 1932,
earned him, at age twenty-five, a reputation as an
important new poet.

After his graduation from Oxford, Auden
taught in England until 1939, when he relocated to
the United States and became a U.S. citizen. The
critical success that followed the publication of his
The Collected Poetryhelped set his literary repu-
tation as a versatile and inventive writer. He con-
tinued to write poetry, plays, and essays while
teaching at various colleges and universities, in-
cluding Bryn Mawr, Bennington, and Oxford. Af-
ter his death in 1973, he was buried in Poet’s Cor-
ner in Westminster Abbey. Auden won several
awards during his lifetime, including the Pulitzer
Prize in Poetry for The Age of Anxiety(1948); the
National Book Award for The Shield of Achilles
(1956); the Feltrinelli Prize (Rome), 1957; Hon-
orary Student (Fellow), Christ College, Oxford
University, 1962-73; and the Gold Medal of the Na-
tional Institute of Arts and Letters, 1968.

Poem Text

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^5

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Tie crépe 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, 10

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; 15

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Poem Summary

Lines 1-4:

The title “Funeral Blues” sets the somber tone

that Auden reinforces in the first stanza, where the

speaker prepares for a funeral. The speaker uses an

imperative voice throughout the poem. John G.

Blair in The Poetic Art of W. H. Audennoted that

“Auden frequently chooses the imperative to attract

attention.” This technique, according to Blair,

brings the poem “closer to the dramatic immediacy

of dialogue, for the speaking voice is usually di-

rected not to the reader but to an audience or an-

other character whose presence is implied by the

framing of the poem.” The technique also helps the

speaker try to gain a sense of control that was lost

when their loved one died. Using this imperative

voice, the speaker tries to encourage others to al-

Funeral Blues

W. H. Auden