FUNERAL BLUES

[STOP ALL THE CLOCKS, CUT OFF THE TELEPHONE]

-1936-

Poet: W. H. Auden
Presented By: Chris Favero
 WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN
Born:
21 February, 1907
York, England
Died:
29 September 1973 (aged 66)
Vienna, Austria
(Wikipedia –
Auden)
Photo courtesy of: news.bbc.co.uk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/710000/images/_7104 Poet – Man of Letters
47_auden150.jpg
 CHILDHOOD
Auden was born in York, England, to George Augustus Auden, a physician, and
Constance Rosalie Bicknell Auden, who had trained (but never served) as a
missionary nurse.
 He was the third of three children, all sons; the eldest, George Bernard Auden,
became a farmer, while the second, John Bicknell Auden, became a geologist.
Auden's grandfathers were both Church of England clergymen; he grew up in an
Anglo-Catholic household which followed a "High" form of Anglicanism with
doctrine and ritual resembling those of Roman Catholicism.

(Wikipedia – Auden)
 EDUCATION

Auden's first boarding school was St. Edmund's School, Surrey

 At thirteen he went to Gresham's School in Norfolk
 His first published poems appeared in the school magazine in 1923.
In 1925 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, with a scholarship in biology,
but he switched to English by his second year.
Auden left Oxford in 1928 with a Masters degree.

(Wikipedia –
Auden)
 1936 / WORLD EVENTS
January 20 – King George V of the U.K. dies.
February 6 – The IV Olympic Winter Games open in Garmisch-
Partenkirchen, Germany.
March 1 – Construction of Hoover Dam is completed.
March 7 – In violation of the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi
Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
August 1 – The 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany, and
mark the first live television coverage of a sports event in world history.
November 2 – The BBC launches the world's first regular (then) high-
definition television service.
November 3 – U.S. presidential election, 1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt is
Photo courtesy of: WiciaQ
http://wiciaq.deviantart.com/art/Reflection-of-sorrow-
reelected to a second term in a landslide victory over Alf Landon.
58745568 (Wikipedia – 1936)
 FUNERAL BLUES
More commonly known as Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, exists in two very
different versions: the original version in five stanzas, and the 1938 final version in four
stanzas.
The original five-stanza version was a parody of a poem of mourning for a political
leader written for the verse play The Ascent of F6, which Auden wrote with Christopher
Isherwood in 1936. Both the original and the later version share the first and second
stanzas, but the endings are entirely different.
The final four-stanza version of the poem was written to be sung by the soprano Hedli
Anderson, in a setting by Benjamin Britten.
(Wikipedia – Auden)
FUNERAL BLUES - SPOKEN
 STANZA I

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.

National Public Radio -

Poem
 STANZA II

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, 
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

National Public Radio - Poem

 STANZA III

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was
wrong.

National Public Radio -

Poem
 STANZA IV

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.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

National Public Radio - Poem

FUNERAL BLUES
[STOP ALL THE CLOCKS, CUT OFF THE TELEPHONE]
-1936-

-Summary-
WORKS CITED

Auden Society

Wikipedia - Auden

Wikipedia - 1936

National Public Radio - Poem

deviantART - Images

Google Images

YouTube - Reading