While W. H. Auden is usually considered a master poet of political and intellectual conscience, in this poem he touches on the emotional suffering of a recently widowed woman. By using the literary device of imagery the poet paints a gloomy funeral scene personifying the intense emotions of a loved one as she attempts to deal with the loss of her soul mate. The first emotion that is pictured, in this funeral dirge, is that …showed first 75 words of 861 total…

…showed last 75 words of 861 total…fact that this couple has enjoyed a beautiful life together. While the overall tone of the poem is one of despair, there is also a sense of hopelessness as the realization sinks in that what she thought would sustain her has now been taken away and nothing in her life will ever be right again, “I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong...For nothing now can ever come to any good.”