Funeral Blues — "Stop all the clocks"

Still in copyright. Print it from a licensed edition. Warn the reader that the last stanza is where people break — agree in advance what you do if they cannot finish it.

Pieces still in copyright are listed by title and author only — we name them and tell you where to get them, but we do not reproduce the words. Public-domain text is printed in your script in full.

The poem first appeared in Auden’s 1936 play The Ascent of F6, was rewritten as a cabaret song, and found its present fame after it was read in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

The speaker demands that the whole world stop for one death. Clocks, telephones, pianos, traffic and even the sky are ordered to fall silent and mourn in public. Then the poem turns inward: the person who died was everything to the speaker, every direction and every part of the week, and the belief that love would last forever has turned out to be wrong. The last lines go further still, asking for the stars, moon, sun and sea to be taken away, because nothing good can come now. It is grief without consolation, and it does not pretend otherwise.

The most requested modern funeral poem, and the hardest to get through. Read at a funeral or memorial service. Themes: stop all the clocks · raw grief · a partner · nothing now can come to any good · famous.

The death of a partner or spouse, especially a sudden or early one, and families who want their loss said at full strength rather than softened. It suits secular services and many religious ones as a reading alongside scripture. It is wrong for a gentle celebration of a long life, and for families who want hope in the room.

Usually after the eulogy or life story, when the room is ready for the full weight of the loss. It needs something steadier to follow it, such as a short comforting reading or the committal. A close friend or family member reads it more often than the officiant.

Allow about a minute and a half at a ceremony pace of about 130 words a minute, from the reader’s first word to their last.

• Agree with the reader, before the day, what happens if they cannot finish. The officiant can stand nearby with a copy and take over without any fuss.
• The first half is a list of public commands. Keep the voice firm through it; the shift to private grief in the middle hits harder if the start is controlled.
• Do not speed up through the final stanza. Read it slowly and flatly, then let the silence after it stand before the next words.

All funeral readings →