07^th October, 2011

"FUNERAL BLUES" BY W. H. HAUDEN - ANALYSIS

The poem was written by W. H. Hauden in 1976. The title "Funeral blues" foregoes the theme of the text. It tells about a mourning described as a blues song. It is a poem, arranged into four stanzas. Each stanza has got four lines.

In the poem all the verbs are in the imperative form to involve the reader in the feelings described. The lines are tidied up by rhyming couplets. In each stanza the first and the second line form a rhyme, as the third and the fourth ones. This use gives musicality to the text. In the second stanza the first and the second lines are linked by a run-on lines. In the third stanza there is the repetitive alliteration of the possessive adjective "my". This figure of speech strenghtens the importance of the dead for the protagonist and highlights the pain felt by him.

The topic of this poem is the death of the poet's lover. It is right the poet the speaking voice and describes his feelings and his reactions. In each stanza he analyses a different aspect and a different moment of his mourning. The first stanza deal with the first days after the death, he doesn't want to talk to anybody, to listen to anything, he would like to stop the time. But it is not possible and the day of the funeral comes. This is the topic of the second stanza. By the poet everything and everyone shoud show his sufference, even the airplane, the doves and the traffic policemen. In the third stanza, after the service, he is alone and thinks of his lover. He was all for the poet, he had thought their love would have been endless but he had been wrong: it finished. The last stanza, the fourth, ends with the refusal of everything by the protagonist, even of the beautiful natural elements, with the awareness that nothing would help him to feel better.