Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden Essay

The poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, has a dark and eerie tone. This poem is so sullen and creepy because the narrator’s wife, Annabel Lee, was killed by the heinous, chilling winds that were dispatched by the angels. Her husband, who became a widower, wrote the poem beside Annabel Lee, who was dead in her tomb. This has a very dark and glum toon, which causes the reader to jump into a somber mood. The text states in a dreadful and shocking tone “that the wind came out of the cloud by night/chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (Poe 25-26). The poem “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)” by E E Cummings, is a very powerful poem about love. It is mainly about a man who knows that his life is complete because he has his love by his side. Cummings uses passionate and warm hearted words to make the reader incorporate and feel an emotional mood towards the poem. In a spiritual and loving tone it states that “i want, no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)” (Cummings 6-7). Each one of the poems are unique in their own way, but both have completely divergent feelings and tones to them. “Annabel Lee” has a dark, gloomy, and cold tone that makes the reader feel a sense of loneliness. Poe sets a sorrowful and mournful

Essentially I feel that each poem in its own “Funeral Blues” (W. H. Auden), “Death, be not proud” (John Donne), and “Because I could not stop for Death” (Emily Dickinson) are unique in their own way however, I feel that two poems in particular may show more similarity in each other versus all three being compared at once although, I will be comparing and contrasting all three poems towards the end of this essay. For example, When reading “Funeral Blues” (W. H. Auden), I felt a greater sense of similarity to “Because I could not stop for death” (Emily Dickinson) versus “Death, be not proud” (John Donne) so I will begin to discuss those poems first. When comparing each poem I will

Blues is one of the most captivating genres of music. The genre was originated in the late 1800’s as a method used by African American slaves to express the circumstances as well as to put emphasis on their feelings and emotions. In order to create these feelings in this music, blues artists incorporate many of the same techniques used to write poetry. One of the most easily identifiable songs in which it is easy to see the relation between poetic elements and blues music is the song “Empty Bed Blues” by Bessie Smith.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

The poem, “Po’ Boy Blues” uses rhyme in the fourth and sixth lines of each stanza.

In W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” (pg. 762), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has died and how the speaker feels that his life has been forever changed and that he will never recover. In Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” (pg. 767), the poem takes place a short time after the speaker’s beloved has passed away and how she feels that she can master the feeling of losing someone the she loves. However, she seems to be in denial over her true feelings. Between the two poem’s, Auden’s “Funeral Blues” seems to do a better job than  Bishop’s “One Art”, in using rhyme, alliteration, and structure to show the reader the feelings and emotional state of the speaker after their beloved has died.

The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and

The second theme that I will be discussing is suffering. In “Aubade”, along with fearing death the man also talks about his dissatisfaction with his life. From reading the poem you learn

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

Although in both “Annabel Lee” and “ Funeral Blues” the overall theme conveyed is the pain behind losing a loved one, the tone between both poems differs. In “ Annabel Lee” a young man talks about having a love so deep with young girl named Annabel Lee, that the angels, whom he describes as “winged seraphs of Heaven”(11) were jealous. Described in the first four stanzas, the young man is almost cursing at the turn of events that led to Annabel´s death. He expresses a cynical and vengeful tone when talking about the death of his beloved, blaming both the jealous angels for taking her away and her family for locking her in a coffin forever. Nevertheless, in the last two stanzas, there is a more accepting and settling tone when the speaker mentions,

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.

First, W.H. Auden uses metaphors throughout the poem in order to reveal how the speaker feels for the loved one they lost. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. The first metaphor W.H. Auden uses is “He was my North, my South, my East and West” (9). This metaphor conveys that the person who has died means a lot to the speaker. The directions refer to the direction the speaker’s life is going. This implies that the speaker has lost all direction now that they have lost this loved one. The next metaphor the author uses is “My working week and my Sunday rest” (10). The author uses these words to show that the relationship between the speaker and the person who died had an intimate relationship. The final

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

Throughout the poem, W.D. Auden did an exceptional job incorporating the several examples of figures of speech. By including these devices, Auden drew deeper connections to the overall themes of death and love with the readers. For example, “let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/ scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” is an illustration of personification (Auden, 5-6). Auden personifies an airplane to mourn over someone and scribble in the sky. Both human like characteristics suggest that the speaker wishes for everyone to know that his loved one has passed, so that everyone can mourn over the deceased, like the speaker. Another example of this is shown through a series of metaphors in lines 9-12 “…my North, my South, my East, my West,/ My working week and my Sunday rest,/ My noon, my