The Unknown Citizen

“Stop All the Clocks” by W. H. Auden (1938)

This poem, also known as “Funeral Blues,” was originally written for a play by Auden and Isherwood, Ascent of F6 (1936). Two years later, Auden radically revised it and transformed it into a cabaret song performed on stage. In 1940, it was collected into Another Time, with “The Unknown Citizen.” “Stop All the Clocks,” like “The Unknown Citizen,” is an elegy and employs loosely metered heroic couplet rhyming. Its tone is more sincere—“[h]e was my North, my South, my East and West / My working week and my Sunday rest” (Lines 9-10)—and presents individual distress instead of a bureaucratic response.

“Epitaph on a Tyrant” by W. H. Auden (1940)

This political poem also appeared in Another Time and was placed right before “The Unknown Citizen” in the volume. This poem has a similar subject matter and the same use of sarcastic irony. The tyrant of the title could easily refer to various totalitarian governmental leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. The men in power are in thrall to the tyrant and “[w]hen he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter” (Line 5). The idea that the surrounding populace is under the sway of the tyrant’s moods is indicated by lines like “when he cried the little children died in the streets” (Line 6).