An Analysis of "Stop All the Clocks" by W.H. Auden

“Stop All the Clocks” is a 4-stanza poem written by W.H. Auden. To put it simply, this poem is about the speaker mourning her deceased lover. However, when reading through the poem, it is not just about grief, but about a multitude of negative emotions, such as depression, anger, and anguish.

The first and second stanzas:

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

“Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.”

This poem is about the death of the speaker’s lover and how he had just passed away. The first stanza reads as though the speaker is in disbelief that the world continues on, while her world, her lover, just ended. Additionally, the second stanza also reads this way, but also carries a hint of anger, as if the speaker is jealous and angry that the world gets to continue on. She is at his funeral while the world keeps spinning as if nothing happened, but to her, it feels like time suddenly stopped.

The third stanza:

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.”

The speaker is mourning her lover, but she also seems to feel disappointment and anger in herself for thinking that their love would last forever. Aside from disappointment, it is as if she thinks her past thought was so naive and immature. Her anger does not just come from the world continuing on while hers has stopped; it also comes from a thought that she held dear to her heart. She was so sure, and now she has been proven wrong in perhaps the worst way possible.

The fourth stanza:

“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;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

After her lover’s death, the speaker no longer feels joy in her surroundings, as she is so tangled up in grief and depression. The use of the word “now” does not have to be applied to her depression alone, but also how she felt about the world because of her lover. It is as if he was the one that made all those things so beautiful, she longed for them because of him, and he made the world brighter. But now that he is gone, everything is dim and colorless. Nothing will ever be the same again without him, and one might even say she feels suicidal, like she has nothing left to lose.

Sources:

https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/stopclocks.html