140 Poetry for Students

ter the landscape to more closely reflect the

speaker’s emotional state.

In the first two stanzas, the speaker demands

that certain rituals be performed during the funeral

ceremony. In the first stanza, the speaker, express-

ing an overtly sensitive response to everyday

sounds, calls for a silence that is both respectful

and representative of his internal state of mind.

Clocks, telephones, dogs, and pianos must not

make a sound in honor of the one who has died.

Clocks must stop, since time, in essence, has

stopped for the speaker after the loss of love. Tele-

phones must be cut off since no further communi-

cation is desired. Dogs, who often bark during play,

must be quieted since the speaker does not feel

playful. Not even the music from a piano can be

appreciated. The only sound the speaker wants to

hear is the somber beat of a “muffled” drum as the

funeral procession begins. Only after these careful

preparations have been completed can the coffin be

brought out and the mourners allowed to arrive.

Lines 5-8:

In these lines, the speaker insists that the sur-

roundings reflect the somber occasion and the

speaker’s mood. The only sound called for besides

the muffled drum is the “moaning” of airplanes

overhead that write “He Is Dead” in the sky for on-

lookers. These two sounds more closely reflect and

perpetuate the speaker’s mood. The processional

path must be appropriately decorated with “crepe

bows round the white necks of the public doves”

and black gloves must be worn by policemen.

Lines 9-12:

The focus shifts in these lines from the funeral

procession to a description of the speaker’s rela-

tionship with the deceased. All the images in this

stanza illustrate the prodigious effect the loved one

had on the speaker. The first three lines describe the

completeness of their relationship in images of dis-

tance and time. The ninth line, “He was my North,

my South, my East and West,” suggests that he gave

the speaker direction and a sense of constancy. The

next line and a half, “my working week and my Sun-

day rest, / My noon, my midnight” describes him as

an integral part of every moment of the speaker’s

daily life. He influenced the speaker’s communica-

tion (“my talk”) and mood (“my song”). These lines

suggest that he was, in fact, the speaker’s life. The

final line of this stanza expresses the genuine sor-

row the speaker experiences over his/her loss and

points to a growing sense of disillusionment. The

speaker had previously believed “that love would

last for ever” but now admits, “I was wrong.” Au-

den 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.

Lines 13-16:

The sense of disillusionment continues in the

poem’s final stanza and becomes coupled with feel-

ings of bitterness. The ceremony so carefully con-

structed by the speaker in the first two stanzas does

not seem to be enough to express or reflect his/her

intense grief. As a result, the speaker expresses a

desire to alter the universe. Auden employs a

caesura in the middle of the thirteenth line to show

the effects of the speaker’s sorrow and his/her de-

sire to recreate the universe in order to objectify

that sorrow. The beauty of nature cannot be ap-

preciated anymore. Since the stars “are not wanted

now,” the landscape must change. The speaker’s

“star” has been effectively “put out,” and so the

moon, the sun, the ocean, and the woods must be

packed up, dismantled, poured away and swept up

since they can no longer offer comfort. As in stanza

two, the speaker here calls for all to recognize and

echo his suffering. The world has changed after the

death of his love, and as a result “nothing now can

ever come to any good.” There is no romantic sense

in the finality of that statement of the transcendence

of love or the possibility of regaining that love af-

ter death.

Funeral Blues

Media

Adaptations

• Actor John Hannah in the 1994 film Four Wed-
  dings and a Funeralread an excerpt from “Fu-
  neral Blues.” The 1994 film starred Hugh Grant
  and Andie MacDowell and became a huge box-
  office success. It was directed by Mike Newell
  and produced in the United Kingdom by Work-
  ing Title Films.


• The poem was also released as a Random House
  Audio Book, read by John Hannah.