Wanting Time to Stand Still in Stop All the Clocks by W. H. Auden

The four stanza poem “Stop All the Clocks” by W. H. Auden refers to a time and place where the poet wants everything to stand still. Although we do not know who the subject is, we pick up clues throughout the poem to think it is someone close to the poet because of the line “He was my North, my South, my East and West”. The tone of the poem is very sad which is enforced with the use of internal rhyming scheme aabb and couplets with every two lines. The rhythm helps make the poem flow better because a poem that is unorganized and broken makes the audience pay more attention on trying to read the poem instead of understanding the poem. Through the use of literary elements in the poem, Auden conveys the meaning of overwhelming grief and tragic loss, best exemplified in the last lines, "For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

Using the title in the first line of the poem shows that Auden is so overcome with grief that he are commanding the audience to do something that is impossible, “Stop all the clocks”. The first few lines give the impression that he doesn’t want to accept the truth, by stopping time and shutting people out he may be able to preserve the delusion that nothing has happened for a little longer. The verbs in the first three lines explain that the poet wants to eliminate the daily distractions of life; clocks ticking, telephones ringing, dogs barking and pianos playing, so that he can mourn for his loved one in peace. In the last line of the poem, Auden finally lets go of the denial when he says “Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come”.

The second stanza starts off with the line “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead” where the audience can almost visualize the airplanes moving around the sky almost as if ...

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...is sentiment is echoed in the following line, “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;” Both these hyperbolic metaphors are again intended to symbolize the aimless feelings of the author and the void left by the death of this man. By commanding the audience to dispel of the oceans and remove the forests of the world, the speaker shows both how meaningless life is without the deceased and how the world would be able to equate with such a loss. The negativeness of the poem is captured best in line 16, “For nothing now can ever come to any good.” The death of this man has devastated the speaker in such a way that he feels both without purpose and unable to see any good in the world. This line concludes the poem and emphasizes the melancholy tone evident throughout. Like the death of his lover, the last line emphasizes the finality of life and an end void of purpose.