Stop All The Clocks, Cut Off The Telephone

2 Pages 597 Words

“Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone ”


Wystan Hugh Auden is known for writing poetry that says something truthful about life. In his poem, “Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone ”, Auden writes of the importance of love in our life. The speaker in the poem has lost love in his life, and believes his life is meaningless without love. W.H. Auden uses imagery and diction to convey the idea that love should not be taken for granted, love is wonderful and without love the world is nothing.
Throughout “Stop All the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone”, Auden uses imagery to portray love to be vital to our life. The loss of his love seems to be so immense that the speaker creates a funeral for his love. The funeral is not just an ordinary funeral it is painted in the reader’s mind as a funeral fit for royalty. In this grand funeral, there are “aeroplanes circl[ing] moaning overhead” (5) and “crepe bows” (7) are put around “the white necks of the public doves” (7). Few funerals involve airplanes, “scribbling on the sky” (6) and doves wearing bows, a funeral life this would belong to someone great. The speaker is creating the idea that love is so magnificent that if it were to have a funeral, only the best would be fit. In the fourth stanza of the poem, Auden creates the image that without love everything else is worthless. The speaker believes that his love is dead so in turn everything else should die too. He portrays the universe to be inferior to love, “the stars are
not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” (13-14), he is very nonchalant about theses massive structures. He lets the reader feel his pain; he no longer cares about the moon and the stars because his heart is empty. These are very powerful images, which show how important love is and how it feels to lose love.

The diction in the first line of the poem sets the importance of love to the speaker. ...