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 Twelve (poem) half-tone lower, stop telling lies". Such a "criminal" atmosphere pervades the Petrograd of "The Twelve", a frightening city in the snowy winter of 1918. Aleksandr Blok considered this poem to be his best work. During the war, Savoyarov met Aleksandr Blok who attended his concerts in cinemas and café chantant a dozen times in 1914-1918. Sometimes Blok brought actors who recited his poems and plays onstage. Thus in 1918 he persistently showed Savoyarov’s performances to his wife Liubov Mendeleyeva-Blok so that she could "adopt" his eccentric manner (for reading "The Twelve" poem). He wrote in his journals: "Liuba finally saw