'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone'

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W H Auden

The poem ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ conveys the meaning of overwhelming grief, tragic
loss, and an unrelenting pessimism best exemplified in the last lines “For nothing now can ever come to
any good”. "Stop all the clocks." Referred to time could also be an allusion to the death and brevity of
life which cause the author such agony. Use of personification in the second stanza. Personification is
when human characteristics are given to an inanimate object. The poet describes how the aeroplanes
“circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead” metaphor uses is “He was my
North, my South, my East and West”. This metaphor conveys that the person who has died means a lot to
the speaker. The directions refer to the direction the speaker’s life is going. This implies that the speaker
has lost all direction now that they have lost this loved one. The next metaphor the author uses is “My
working week and my Sunday rest”.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

BY  RO BE RT FR OS T

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Metaphor
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" relies on imagery of the natural world, like leaves, flowers, and
sunrises, to make meaning. It refers to nature as a "her" and says that she has a hard time
holding on to the color gold.
Notice first that only lines two and seven have all three stressed syllables in
perfect alliteration within the line: Hardest-Hue-Hold, and Dawn-Down-Day.
Nothing Gold can stay theme that all the things or living things will not last forever in the nature.
11. C
12. D
13. A
14. D
15. B