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On the surface, “Funeral Blues” has a mournful tone that appropriately reflects the poem’s title. The speaker clearly struggles with grief, and feels desolate in the wake of the loss of this loved one. However, it’s important to remember that tone doesn’t simply refer to the speaker’s attitude. It also refers to the poet’s attitude to the material presented in the poem. Whereas the speaker is clearly in mourning, it’s crucial to notice how Auden both emphasizes and quietly works against the speaker’s sorrow. On the one hand, Auden emphasizes the speaker’s mournful attitude on the level of form, suggesting a distorted mindset with the poem’s irregular meter. The variable meter, which Auden exaggerates with the strategic use of caesura and enjambment, creates a feeling of instability that mirrors the speaker’s sense that the world is out of joint. On the other hand, even as he evokes this kind of disjointedness, Auden also suggests a competing sense of order and stability. He does so through the poem’s perfectly regular rhyme as well as his pervasive use of assonance and consonance. Thus, despite the speaker’s evident state of mourning and hopelessness, Auden preserves the possibility of hope.

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