funeral blues by w h orden has undergone a number of reinventions since it first appeared it began life as a five stanza satirical poem of mourning for a fictional political leader in the verse play the ascent of f6 which the poet co-authored with the writer christopher isherwood in 1936 ordon went on to rewrite it a short while later as a cabaret song for the soprano headley anderson he removed its final three stanzas which made reference to characters in the play replacing them with the third and fourth stanzas that we know now at which point it was set to music by the english composer benjamin britton these revisions and its musical accompaniment transformed the poem into a stand-alone personal lament about the death of an intimate loved one which is forceful and rather melodramatic and it was this version that was published in the 1938 anthology poems of today where its original title was simply its first line stop or the clocks cut off the telephone by the time it appeared in auden's own collection another time in 1940 it had been given the title funeral blues the poem came to the attention of a new generation when it appeared in the 1994 british romantic comedy four weddings and a funeral where it is read aloud by the character of matthew at the funeral of his long-time partner gareth stripped of its rather strident and grandiose musical accompaniment its understated delivery allows its plain diction to take center stage to define the film's most heartbreaking moment as it becomes a powerfully raw elegy communicating as it does the devastating and disorientating effects of the loss of someone on those who are left behind to mourn them the poem is 16 lines long comprising four stanzas each stanza is a quatrain consisting of two rhyming couplets all rhymes are masculine or single which means that the rhyme is always located on the final stressed syllable of each line ordon's diction is plain and simple throughout mainly comprising words of one syllable which is underscored by the strict a a b b rhyme scheme and by the fact that most lines are end stopped with only a total of two of the sixteen lines in jammed three of the four stanzas are governed by the imperative mood which is used to demand or require that an action be performed i.e it is used to communicate an order and is only found in the present tense second person note that the u is implied in an order communicated in the imperative the overwhelming number of orders contained in this poem not only makes the reader feel as though they're being spoken to directly but also in combination with the strict rhyme scheme creates a sense of the speaker trying to retain what power they have left to them to manage not only the chaos of their grief in a situation that is beyond their control but also their newfound perspective on their own existence this control is only superficial however when we take a look at the poem's underlying meter which although predominantly iambic didam does vary extensively lines range in length from as few as nine syllables to as many as twelve although some ten syllable lines are written in iambic pentameter and some twelve 12-syllable lines are written in iambic hexameter most lines are heavily substituted with trochees dundee dum-dum critic feet dum-de-dum and anapistes di dum which recreate the irregular patterns of an uncrafted and emotionally raw spoken english there are also places in which the meter is flexible according to the stress and intonation that the individual reader wishes to place on particular words in terms of figurative language the poem can be divided into three the first half of the poem contains relatively little figurative language such as simile and metaphor even if it is melodramatic the speaker really does want all the clocks literally stopped and airplanes to actually skywrite the announcement that their loved one has died for example however impractical this may be by way of contrast the third stanza is meant almost entirely metaphorically as the poet moves on from the practicalities of the funeral and how these should reflect the deceased person's importance to the explicit exploration of how the death has affected the speaker's sense of their own existence and their relationship to the universe the fourth stanza is an interesting mixture of the two as imagery which one would normally interpret as being metaphorical e.g the oceans cannot simply be poured away in the world as we understand it is meant literally as the speaker has undergone a paradigm shift with the result that language needs to be understood in novel ways in this newly discovered world note how odin makes extensive anaphoric use of the first person possessive pronoun my in the third stanza as he finally introduces the speaker's confrontation with their own emotions the tone of the poem alternates between being impersonal as the speaker tries to distance themselves from their grief through the listing of a series of orders to one of despair and devastation as they contemplate all that they have lost and returns once more to being impersonal as they communicate how their grief has left them feeling alienated and disconnected from a world which has been revealed as false and in which they no longer wish to exist there's a preponderance of plosiv and throughout the poem which enhance the speaker's sense of bitterness and grief the blues in the title funeral blues refers to a genre of vocal music created in the early 20th century with its origins in the african-american folk music and spirituals of the deep south of the united states songs tend to focus not on the telling of a story but on the expression of the sadness and melancholy felt by the singer because of their problems usually due to love the title therefore not only gives an indication of the musical style of the original accompaniment composed by benjamin britton but also suggests that the poem will explore the sadness felt by the speaker as they contemplate the funeral of a loved one the poem begins just as the funeral procession where the hearse leaves the home to take the coffin to the church for burial is about to commence it starts abruptly with orders to stop all the clocks cut off the telephone prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone the speaker wants all noises that are evidence of life going on to be suspended before the coffin makes its appearance if we think about when the poem was written in the first half of the previous century technology was nowhere near as advanced as it is now digital technology did not exist and machines had mechanical working parts therefore clocks would have ticked and chimed and telephones would have made the shrill noise of an actual ringing bell inside them the speaker clearly finds these everyday noises totally jarring and disrespectful to the deceased person at this moment the relentless ticking of a clock indicates the inexorable passing of time of life continuing without the speaker's deceased loved one and the harsh jangling of the bell indicates the presence of a person on the other end of the line with whom the speaker has no desire to communicate note how odin has substituted a troche dumdee in the first foot otherwise known as a metrical inversion in a line of otherwise iambic pentameter putting stress on the very first word stop and serving to enhance the speaker's commanding tone which they adopt for the next two stanzas the speaker also wishes to prevent the dog from barking by giving it a juicy bone so that it is too preoccupied with gnawing at it to make any harsh and loud noises music which is listened to for pleasure is also inappropriate so he orders an unnamed someone to silence the pianos it is only then in a moment of pure silence that the order may be given accompanied by a muffled drum to bring out the coffin and let the mourners come the beating of drums does not usually attend a coffin on its way for burial during a private funeral drums are muffled i.e their sound is damped to accompany the graveside processional in a military funeral the way in which the speaker demands that his loved one is given all the trappings of a very public funeral indicates that the death is at least a hymn of earth-shattering importance now that the coffin has made an appearance the second stanza considers how the speaker wishes the funeral procession to make its way to the burial ground let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message he is dead put crate bows round the white necks of the public doves let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves once more the speaker indicates the extent to which his deceased loved one was the most important person in his world the adjective moaning to describe the engines of the aircraft personifies them and suggests that they feel grief just as the speaker does note that the message is simply that he is dead the use of the simple third-person personal pronoun indicates the speaker feels no need to explicitly name him because the whole world should know who he is and the capitalization of dead communicates the momentousness and finality of the event in the victorian era and into the early 20th century crepe a material traditionally made from silk and in varying shades of black and grey was the approved fabric for morning clothes at the time this poem was written there were much fewer sets of traffic lights than there are today and often traffic policemen would stand at intersections and junctions to control traffic flow they would wear white armbands or gloves to make their arm and hand signals more visible to motorists here ordon is suggesting that the solemnity and decorum of the moment should be reflected in the appearance of those even the doves in public roles the focus of the poem shifts in the third stanza as a speaker turns away from the outward trappings of the funeral to his own sense of utter despair and hopelessness now that he is alone what has seemed up to this point to be a crazy and over-the-top desire for the pomp and circumstance of a state funeral for a private individual becomes painfully logical as he reveals in a series of metaphors that he was my north my south my east and west it was his whole world at every point on the compass surrounding him now that he has lost him he feels disorientated having also lost his bearings as he no longer has his presence to give him direction in life note that this line is in iambic pentameter the regularity of which evoking the harmony and certainty of their previous life together not only this but he was with him 24 7. it was my working week and my sunday rest my noon my midnight my talk my song in fact there was no part of the speaker's life over which he had no influence a sense which is enhanced not only by ordon's anaphoric use of the first person possessive pronoun my in these three lines but also his employment of antithesis or contrasting pairs of ideas he was also there perhaps in the bad times as well as the good noon is the time of day when the sun is at its peak and midnight is the point which is seen as the darkest time of the day perhaps suggesting that he was by his side at the speaker's highest and lowest points similarly my talk suggests seriousness and discussion while my songs suggest joy and celebration and thus encompasses all facets of human emotion and existence there's a sense that the speaker now feels voiceless the stanza ends on the heartbreaking line i thought that love would last forever i was wrong not only has the speaker lost the love of their life but this has also brought about an earth-shattering realization that everything they ever believed in was false note ordan's use of caesura here with the colon which creates a pause midline and decisively separates his past idealistic views from his new found disillusionment which will stay with him from now on the three words which follow this scissor are bluntly definitive in their point-blank rejection of love and this is this emotionless tone which dominates the final stanza at the beginning of the fourth stanza the speaker distances themselves as they change from the active to the passive voice the stars are not wanted now stars have traditionally been associated with love and romance and the fact that the speaker sees no further use for them suggests that the world has lost its romantic veneer to reveal the artifice that lies beneath the way in which they can so easily be put out as though they are powered by electricity suggests that the speaker now essentially perceives them to be as artificial as props on a stage that can be extinguished at the flip of a switch at the end of a performance feeling of nihilism continues as he orders the moon the sun the seas and the land in other words the entire universe to be disposed of just as easily pack up the moon and dismantle the sun pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood leaving nothing one assumes but empty darkness behind note how he diminishes the scale of these heavenly bodies and natural features and suggest that they are mere constructions which can be manually taken apart and cleared away the poem's final line for nothing now can ever come to any good is bleak in its certainty of the future's desolation the imagery of this final stanza where the metaphorical is meant literally indicates that the speaker's sense of their own existence has been irrevocably shaken and their relationship with the world around them has been fundamentally changed forever leading to a radically different relationship with the language appropriate to describe it thanks for watching if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section below and i'll do my best to answer them don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos on english language topics and exam techniques and english literature texts