Funeral Blues Funeral Blues "Funeral Blues" or "Stop all the clocks" is a poem by W. H. Auden. An early version was published in 1936, but the poem in its final, familiar form was first published in "The Year's Poetry" (London, 1938). The first, and less widely known, version of the poem, written and published in 1936, has five stanzas; the 1938 final version has four. Only the first two stanzas are the same in both versions. The 1936 version was a satiric poem of mourning for a political leader, written for the verse play "The Ascent of F6", by Auden and
The Weary Blues Weary Blues.” He was in a bar that provided entertainment. Once the speaker finishes his rendition of the musician’s song, the setting changes. At the end of the poem, the reader ends up in the musician’s home. “The Weary Blues” is written in free verse; however, all the lines that are not lyrics to the Weary Blues are rhyming couplets: “Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light.” Night and light rhyme just like tune-croon, key-melody, stool-fool and all the other couplets. The rhymes are not perfect, but when read