07.10.2011

Pairwork

FUNERAL BLUES
by "W.H. Auden"

The text is a short poem organized into four stanzas. Four quatrains to be precise.

From the title "Funeral Blues" we can deduce that the poem will talk about the death of someone or something, thanking the word "Funeral". It may introduce a sensation of sadness and a feeling of melancholy, that is because blues music has always been a typical sad music that conveys the idea of something lost.

Every stanzas is composed by four lines. They have an own meaning:

• First stanza: the main topic is the silence. The autor uses the imprativ form for a series of requests, in particoular the autor wants the "silence", he wants to convey a funereal sense.

• Second stanza: the main topic is the everyday moviment, the passage and the change: someone is dead. He.
  I believethat the statement "He is Dead" is used to put his lover up on a pedestal, as a God-like figure, that is why the autor uses a capital letter.
  The capital "D" used for Dead maybe is because is wants demonstrate a reverant respect for death.

• Third stanza: the autor explains what HE was for him: Everything: "He was my North, my South, my East and West".
  The sentence "I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong" shows the disenchantment and the frustration proved by the autor. This is the most poignant line in the poem and is where the poem crashes.

• Fourth stanza: the anger caused by the pain of the autor is utmost devastating. There is a great mataphor "Pour away the ocean" at line three, and it gives the vibe that the poet feels complete pain and who cares about the ocean; anymore its dead to him just like his lover.