Comparing Stop All The Clocks And Verses Upon The Burning Of Our House

The Poetry Foundation defines an Elegy as “often a melancholy melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death but ends in consolation. Two poems that exhibit conventions of an elegy are “Stop all the clocks” by W. H. Auden and “Verses upon the Burning of our House” by Anne Bradstreet. Both authors aim to reveal the grief of their loss through the use of imagery. In Auden’s case, the loss of his lover has put him in a depressive state that he tries to inflict upon his audience. Bradstreet loses her home in a fire and reveals her loss through illustrative depictions. However, she changes the meaning of her imagery and makes it an opportunity to uplift her reader and provide a sense of hope. Bradstreet wants to motivate her audience, unlike

He grabs his reader’s attention with the command phrase “Stop”, following up with demanding his reader to cease the noise of everyday life, from the cutting of a telephone to the silencing of a piano (Auden 1,3). These depictions of imaginative noise that can be found in common life are typically joyous, but the simplicity of this command allows the reader to understand the immense grief that Auden is experiencing. He is in such a state of depression that he desires for his audience to shift their full attention to the loss of his lover. The repetition of “Stop” creates a mental jump cut to the situation Auden describes. All the noise he wishes to stop becomes lifeless in the reader’s minds. After he expresses his desire for silence, Auden states, “Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come” (4). This last line of the first stanza is the reader’s introduction as to why Auden is experiencing this great pain. As the reader is taken through the silencing of noise, they begin to imagine a quiet funeral for whoever the author mourns. The only thing the reader can do is to continue on this visceral journey of pain that Auden has injected into his

For example he writes, “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead, Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” What starts out as a common observation, quickly turns into a morbid illustration that grabs the reader's attention and pulls them into a state of discomfort. This discomfort is quite the opposite of Bradstreet’s poem, which uses the expectations of the reader as a chance to uplift them. To further alter the expectations of the poem, Auden writes how he wants the traffic policemen to wear black cotton gloves. This absurd request is a surprise to the audience which makes them realize that Auden really wants everyone to grieve. He takes another normal observation that can be found in day-to-day life and turns it into a chance to call out those who aren't mourning with him. To further elevate this idea, we can look at how Bradstreet uses a similar observation in order to call out those with a negative outlook on her situation. When walking by the ruins of her home, Bradstreet recounts particular objects that once stood place. As the poem continues on, she uses these objects to evaluate what has true value. While most people would fall into a negative state after such an event, Bradstreet convinces her audience that her situation has made her more positive in life. This moral awakening is the point of her poem which further explains Auden’s