Composition

When analysing poems you must look at both outer composition (stanzas, verses, graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision and course). This way of analysing a poem applies to “Stop All the Clocks” by W.H. Auden too.

Outer composition

“Stop All the Clocks” is a four-stanza poem with 16 lines/verses. Each stanza has four verses, being thus a quatrain. The verses rhyme two by two: aabb.

The poem is about the death of a loved one whom the speaker now mourns. He also calls upon others to join him in his sorrow. Each stanza creates particular images. While the first, second and fourth stanzas are addressed to an audience the speaker calls upon, the third stanza reads more like a personal confession of the speaker’s feelings for the person that has passed away.

Inner composition

The first stanza calls up...