W. H. Auden's 'Stop All The Clocks'

1200 Words3 Pages

The meaning of Auden's demands W.H.Auden was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century literature. Although he was very versatile (he wrote novels, plays, operas, etc) today is best regarded for his poetry. The piece of work I am going to analyze is the poem “Stop all the Clocks”, which has a very traditional metrical pattern (AABB), is written in iambic rhythm, and in which the author opted for an accessible language and concepts to better portray the deep but totally human understandable feeling he tried to express. The poem is about love – even it can be extrapolated to universal love, it is specifically about homosexual love, what is relevant to say because the idea of making it public at that time was, at least, uncommon. Henceforth, I will focus on how the feeling of grief and loss is conveyed by the imperatives, which structure the poem acting as the backbone …show more content…

If the imperatives have had the function of creating an inward grieving atmosphere and spreading the mourning mood, now the author’s demands reflect his outward absolute grief: “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”. As life without his lover is meaningless for him, we attend to the renunciation of all physical things; the universe and the world (the stars, the moon, the sun, the ocean, the wood). The imperatives show how the things he mentions are worthless now and he just wants to point it out. And why is this aversion to life itself? Because “nothing can ever come to any good” after his lover is dead. This line is summarizing the content of the whole poem; the absolutely misery one feels after one’s lover is gone forever. Therefore the fourth stanza expresses the author's renunciation of the physical world – the love he wants cannot be because this person is not there anymore, so he runs away from the part of life that hurts him so

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