Although Auden wants this world to come to a halt, the death must be announced, as the next stanza details:
“Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves”
This stanza is about opening up this private grief for a public mourning. The stanza insists that everyone should share in this person’s loss because not only has the speaker lost someone very special, essentially, so has the world. To symbolise the pain the writer uses the techniques of personification describe an aeroplane moaning. The personification suggests that the inanimate act and share the dread of the speaker. This line explores the lack of enthusiasm he feels now by using the word “scribbling. The fact the “aeroplanes circle” could refer to the circle of the life. The fact that the message has been written on the sky shows the scale of the writer’s grief now the relationship has ended. To show the God-like significance his partner was in his life, he uses “He” with a capital; there is also emphasis on the three heavy monosyllables that creates a depressed feel to the end of the line. The writer then expresses that all peace has now gone and is blemished and weighed down with death by referring to
“Crêpe bows around the white necks of the public doves”.
Auden continues to describe the insignificance of the rest of the world as he tries to avoid his life. There is an interesting imagery of light vs. dark. Often the dark imagery is used to suffocate the light. For example the white gloves on the policeman are replaced by the dark gloves. Anything relating to the past in this poem is considered as past whereas the present or the future is considers as dark. But then Auden seems to bring the loss back, emphasizing the loss of the speaker. The funeral messages get smaller, to the fine detail of the colour of the policemen’s gloves. The black gloves are yet, another symbols of death.
Auden ten turns the poem, explaining the persons worth and value. The third stanza states:
“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 for ever: I was wrong”
With nine uses of “my” in three lines, the speaker takes possession of his subject. These markings are most often found on a compass, which gives direction. Having lost his map (lover) Auden's life loses direction also: he is lost without his partner. This brings about the theme of meaning of life as, the speakers through the stanza, shows a loss of the purpose of his existence. It also brings about the theme of love as the speaker loses his sense of direction with the loss of his loved one. The tone of the last line of the stanza is sarcastic to shows that the mistake that the speaker makes, when he realises that love cannot be eternal and infinite.
With everything gone in the speaker’s world, he is very much ready to give up
everything that he has. The last stanza states that
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.
The drastic actions suggested in this stanza signify on a larger scale what has happened in the speaker’s life. His first line shows how items of beauty are no longer necessary, it also demonstrates Auden’s vile mood. His second and third lines to the final stanza further illustrate the way nothing has any importance or significance to his life anymore; he uses metaphors of life-giving things being pushed away like litter. “Dismantling the sun” would be to remove the cycle of day and night and hence, go into a complete oblivion. This brings about the theme of order and disorder as the speaker feels a sense of disorder, due to losing his loved one resulting in his depressed attitude.
The poem is hyperbolic, overdone and posturing. The poet’s exaggerations appear in the form of the poem as well as in its content. The ten-syllable line, that occurs is “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” .But many of the other lines extend to eleven or even twelve syllables, such as in “Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves”. These extra syllables may represent the excess of feeling which cannot be expressed within the sentences, the speaker’s emotions spill out beyond ten syllables, requiring extra words to accommodate them. These longer lines may also symbolize how the speaker feels as his loss seems to go beyond his private life and into the public world. The poem uses the traditional pattern of rhythm i.e. AB, AB to further enhance its imagery.
In conclusion “Funeral Blues” could be considered as a true love with its usage of modernist techniques. The poem presents many themes about life and its creation .The magic of Auden, however, is that he is able to invoke his reader’s emotions and have them share and grieve for the loss of someone who is never even named. This is achieved with the usage of assonance, personification, metaphor, imagery, rhythm scheme and the poetic form.