Theme Thursday: Clock


There are so many possibilities, but one stands out for me, a poem that comes to mind whenever clocks are mentioned. I went to YouTube to see whether I could find the video of John Hannah reading it, and I found it. Unfortunately, I cannot embed it, so I decided to send you there instead, to hear W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues.

Then, to my surprise, I found another video - I am not sure who is reading - and it's embeddable. Woo-hoo!



That one line, "Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves" breaks my heart.


Finding Funeral Blues inspired me to keep looking, and I soon found another Auden poem that mentions clocks.

This is "As I Walked Out One Evening".



That's Big Ben in the photo at the top of the page, of course. According to UPI, Big Ben is about to get a spring cleaning. The article also states that someone winds the clock three times a week. I did not know that. What a great job.

Thinking of Big Ben made me wonder whether it were Big Ben that Auden referred to in his poems, but that seems unlikely. He was born in York and educated at Oxford. I've never been to York, but I have heard the bells at Christ Church, Oxford, ringing the hours. I like to think of Auden passing beneath the Tom Tower clock and drawing on that memory to write both the poems I've featured.

Find more Theme Thursday posts here.