Funeral Blues

Funeral Blues Summary Stanza 1 Lines 1-2 Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, The song begins with a series of harsh commands : stop the clocks! Cut off the telephones! The speaker sounds forceful and even angry. These seem like physical representations of time and communication to us. He wants everything to just stop. In the next line, he ask for silence. He wants dogs to stop barking too. On the other hand, the speaker is addressing an audience of mourners as a funeral. Lines 3-4 Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. In the 3rd line, this is not a time for a piano. It's a time for muffled drum. In the next line, the speaker wants the coffin to be brought out and for mourners to come see it. Maybe the 'muffled drum' represent the sound of mourners walking, or of pallbearers carrying a coffin. Or maybe it is a slow and stately drumming that the speaker wants, the kind of drumming that happens at military funerals. The interesting thing about the first four lines is that they are all commands. The speaker is making a big announcement to the world: someone has died. Lines 5-6 Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Sribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, As if stopping the clocks weren't enough. The speaker would like an airplane to write 'He Is Dead' in skywriting to commemorate his grief. While earlier he asked for quiet, and for people to cut off the telephones, basically he wants the whole world to know that 'He Is Dead'. Lines 7-8 Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. More public demands here, as the speaker wants even the 'public doves' (pigeons) – to honor the dead man and he wants even the traffic police to acknowledge him.

Lines 9-10 He was my North, my South, my East and West My working week and my Sunday rest, This shows that the speaker really loved the dead man. The dead man