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Comment 30 of 30, added on July 17th, 2009 at 6:17 PM.
This is a beautiful poem and is going to be in my upcoming english exam so I have an analysis. He wants to deprive everyone and everything of any happiness or enjoyment e.g take the juicy bone away from the dog. He wants to silence everything except for the aeroplane because he wants to show how important this person's death is. The aeroplane also circles like a vulture would circle around a dead body. The word He has been put in capitals to show how important this dead person is. All in all this poem is trying to express the grief the person feels.
Natasha from South Africa
Comment 29 of 30, 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 30, 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 30, 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
Comment 26 of 30, added on April 24th, 2006 at 9:37 AM.
This was an amazing poem ... we read it together as a class. At the end of the poem, we learned that the poet was actually homosexual but our teacher had not told us, in case we held any prejudices. It was shocking ... but his power over language and the reader's emotions wins over everything. I think he manages to capture the feelings of the ones who are left perfectly. He probably manages to do this so well because this really happened. And when you find out that something that's touched you in a major way is true, it touches you even more after that. That's what happened to me. I loved this poem ... made me feel with him.
Salwa from New Zealand
Comment 25 of 30, added on February 4th, 2006 at 10:03 AM.
To Skiewe from South Africa
>
I think actually, the poet is saying that the dog should be stopped from barking, by giving him a juicy bone. ie, give him a bone so that it stops barking.
And yes, it is an incredibly wonderful poem. It touches us all, for who hasn't lost a loved one to death?
All the best.
Mara from Scotland
Mara from United Kingdom
Comment 24 of 30, added on December 10th, 2005 at 9:57 PM.
Im not making light of this wondrous poem, it encompeses all the things you would want to happen when a loved one dies, clocks should stop,planes should circle,black gloves should be worn.
And I would also add my own, "Lay down the straw,when the carriage passes by"
I have read his poem,written on Sept 1, 1939 on the invasion of Russia, by Germany, and it does forshadow our Sept 11th.
Wonderful site, so glad I found it.
marilyn burke from United States
Comment 23 of 30, added on November 14th, 2005 at 6:06 AM.
This poem sent me into the tears when i first being reading it. It was so sad and the dog make me think of my dog. But a dog cannot bark with bone in mouth. Perhaps this shows disability in death? Aeroplanes circle-maybe this shows continuity whereas planes fly and stop. but in the first line clocks stop, which normally don't. Nothing can come to any good perhaps shows that periods of asking all the "whys",m because it says 'for now'. i like this poem a lot and this website is also very nice. keep reading and enjoy!
Skiewe from South Africa
Comment 22 of 30, added on October 1st, 2005 at 12:06 PM.
Funeral Blues allows the anger of loss...it is pure in its 'everyman' language and takes death off its alter of awe and distance...My brother and sister both died and I was obsessed with the 'whys'. I read 'Death Be Not Proud' to my students (NYC/BOED special ed HS in S.Bx) and had to teach that poem down and disect, language issues etc...but then I remembered Auden's Funeral and had my students act out the lines...it was amazing...we all are angry by everyday life continuing when death visits us, 'birds singing, bells ringing' etc. I revisit Funeral many times and find new images each time...I just wish it were on this site again...all my books are in storage...
Dovie McLarnon from United States
Comment 21 of 30, added on September 16th, 2005 at 8:51 PM.
A friend's 27-year-old grandson died this week and this poem was in the worship service. She thought it terrible, anger at God. I had heard it read so beautifully in Four Weddings and A Funeral, did not react that way. When my husband of 55 years died, I marvelled that the world in general could remain so unchanged when mine had altered for the rest of my days until I meet him again. Does anyone know if Auden wrote this before or after his religious conversion? Thank you.
Gwen Arnold from United States
This poem has been commented on more than 10 times. Click below to see the other comments.
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This is a beautiful poem and is going to be in my upcoming english exam so I have an analysis. He wants to deprive everyone and everything of any happiness or enjoyment e.g take the juicy bone away from the dog. He wants to silence everything except for the aeroplane because he wants to show how important this person's death is. The aeroplane also circles like a vulture would circle around a dead body. The word He has been put in capitals to show how important this dead person is. All in all this poem is trying to express the grief the person feels.
Natasha from South Africa