The text of “Funeral Blues” has a very interesting history. It first appeared in a 1936 play that W. H. Auden cowrote with Christopher Isherwood. Set to blues-style music by the English composer Benjamin Britten, the song had a satirical effect within the context of the play. However, Auden soon revised the text, and with a refreshed musical score it became a hit cabaret song for the English singer Hedli Anderson. He called the song “Funeral Blues,” which is the same title the text bore when it appeared as a poem in his 1940 collection, Another Time. Five years later, with the first edition of his Collected Poetry, Auden removed the title and integrated the poem into a series of “Twelve Songs.” Far from its satirical first appearance, the poem in its final form is a powerful meditation on the ways grief leads to emotional instability and isolation. The poem’s speaker has recently lost a loved one, and this loss feels like the end of the world. The speaker attempts to exert some degree of control over the grief by issuing numerous commands in the imperative mood. Ultimately, however, the speaker succumbs to grief and calls for the dismantling of the earth and the heavens.

Take a Study Break