perhaps one of the best poems that describes a person’s love for

his or her spouse. The emotions evoked in the poem are emotions

that people have felt at least once in a lifetime. It is these

emotions that lead the reader towards the central theme of

mourning the death of a loved one and wanting the people of the

world to stop what they are doing in order to help mourn the

passing. By using different aspects of interpretation, mainly the

use of language and prosody, a complete understanding of the

sadness and pain suggested in the poem can be observed through the

usage of different combinations of words.
Throughout the

entire poem Auden uses imagery to express the pain and sorrow the

narrator expresses upon losing a loved one. Auden takes common

situations of little importance in everyday life and makes them

noticeable in the face of death. For example, the narrator wants

to "[p]revent the dog from barking with a juic

“[l]et the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves” in line 8.

Normally traffic policemen, and policemen in general, wear white

communication of the poem brief and precise. The use of iambic

not have been able to exist if the dog had been barking. The

Some topics in this essay:
East West”, , person died, “stop clocks cut, clocks cut, policemen wear, dog barking, “stop clocks, policemen wear black, clocks cut telephone”, dog barking juicy, language prosody, auden narrator, prevent dog barking, traffic policemen, line line, line 2,