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Poet: W. H. Auden
Poem: Funeral Blues
Comment 29 of 29, added on January 4th, 2007 at 1:24 PM.
Hi anyone got any degree level comments on this poem. Need to know if it is political in subject in any way as was written in the 1930's which is the period attributed to high political poetry particularly for audens work.
z
Comment 28 of 29, added on July 13th, 2006 at 5:12 AM.
Funeral Blues is about someone (maybe Wystan Hugh Auden) losing a loved one. It is a poem of passionate love for someone, for when they pass everything must stop as they did, die and never start again. After each stanza (paragraph) you the reader feels more involved and feel more grief for the person lost, it is a time of mourning.Throughout the Funeral Blues W.H.Auden hasn't used a lot of alliteration but in this poem it works out perfectly. Instead he has used assonance to grab the attention of the reader/listener.
The feeling that W.H.Auden wants us as the reader to feel as we comprehend the poem is death at it's worst, to feel like nothing good will ever come again. This is best felt at the end of the poem when he says 'For nothing now can ever come to any good.'
He also wants us to feel and know what he must have felt with love never lasting for ever when he says this paragraph:
'He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my realk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong'
In my person feelings with losing someone i loved all i wanted to happen was everything stop i didn't want the world to wake and see me in such pain. For everything to just wither up and never come back out.
I believe that this poem is the best poem Auden has every written and i believe that many people would think the same, as it is worded in such a lucid manner and expressed so sensitively to he's audience.
R.I.P Wystan Hugh Auden
Always thinking of your emasculate work when i listen and read this poem.
Natasha from Australia
Comment 27 of 29, added on May 21st, 2006 at 3:53 PM.
We studied some poems by Auden in secondary school (British school system, in Hong Kong, early '70s) along with others. The course book was (I think) titled "Ten Great 20th Century British Poets". This poem was NOT included, although I feel it's the best thing he ever did, and probably the best poem of grieving and loss EVER. I suppose they left it off the syllabus because (at that time?) they were scared of laying a poem of such deep feeling before a class of teenagers. Or maybe it was the blatant homosexuality? Or - just maybe - the compilers didn't want to imagine this work of not only genius but unashamed LOVE being analysed in an English class. Some things ARE sacred, and this poem is one of them. I - like thousands of others - first came across the poem in the film "Four Weddings And A Funeral." Frankly, for me, a disappointing and much over-rated film. But even if the film had been a masterpiece, the scene with this poem would have been its high point. I don't care what John Hannah has done or will do. This has got to go down as the best moment of his acting career. For those of you disappointed at not finding it here, it can be read at http://www.egr.unlv.edu/~rho/interests/other/poems/w.h.auden/funeral.blues.html . The third verse especially, and - even more - the anguish of its last line bring tears to my eyes every time. Thank you, Mr. Auden!
jimmy from Spain
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Hi anyone got any degree level comments on this poem. Need to know if it is political in subject in any way as was written in the 1930's which is the period attributed to high political poetry particularly for audens work.
z