Loosing a Loved One, Paper #3

Chris Brownstone

Professor Brady

English 102

24 April 2011

Loosing a loved one

The poems “I Am Not Yours” by Sara Teasdale “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” by W.H. Auden and the song “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy all have themes and tones that relate to each other. Losing a loved one can be very hard on a person. This a reoccurring theme in all three works. All three works have a similar tone which is sorrow and mourning.

In the poem, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” Auden has lost someone who was really close to him. This loss is affecting him really hard because the person he lost was his whole entire life. “My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk my song” (Auden 10-11). The working week is Monday through Saturday and Sunday is known as the day of rest. This quote helps prove that the person who died was in every aspect of his life.  Another example which shows how Auden is having a hard time coping with the loss is “Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; for nothing now can ever come to any good”(Auden 15-16). This means that he wants the world to end because without his soul mate, he will never be able to be happy. The title of the poem “Stop all the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone” also helps to show how Auden is having a hard time coping with the loss because he doesn’t want to talk to anyone on the phone or even know what time it is because none of it matters since he lost the one person he loved the most.

               “I Am Not Yours” is a poem about loosing a person as well. In this poem Teasdale lost the love of her life even though she was never with him. “I am not yours, not lost in you, Not lost, although I long to be”(Teasdale 1-2). This quote means that she is not together with him although she wishes that she could be. She wants to become lost with him just like “Lost as a candle lit at noon, Lost as a snowflake in the sea.”(Teasdale) and spend the rest of their life together. However, she can’t because she is “A taper in a rushing wind”(Teasdale 12). Which is the wick of a candle, and a candle can’t be lit in wind so their flame together will never be able to happen. This is upsetting to her and hard to overcome.

               Sean Combs also known as Puff Daddy has a song called “I’ll be Missing You” which is about him losing his best friend Christopher Wallace who is also known as Biggie Smalls. Throughout the song he talks about how close they were. In these lines “Words can't express what you mean to me, Even though you're gone, We still a team”(Combs 9-11). This quote from the song shows that they were best friends and him being dead isn’t going to change anything. Puff Daddy also explains how hard it is for him to cope with the loss of his friend. “Reminisce sometime, The night they took my friend, Try to black it out but it plays again, When it's real feelings' hard to conceal, Can't imagine all the pain I feel”(Combs 15-19) Puff Daddy explains that when he thinks about the night his friend died, he has a hard time dealing with the emotions that are created. Another thing he says in the song is “Give anything to hear half your breath”(Combs 20) which shows that he misses him so much that he would go to the end of the world and back just to hear him talk one more time. In the song he says how he thinks about him everyday and can’t wait for the day that they meet in heaven which is shown in these lines “Know you're in heaven smilin' down, Watchin' us while we pray for you, Everyday we pray for you, Till the day we meet again” (Combs 33-36). This quote is a perfect example of how much he misses his best friend that that he is always thinking of him.

            All three of these works of literature have similar themes which are love lost, and the lost of a loved one. Both “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” and “I’ll Be Missing You” actually deal with the death of a loved one and “I Am Not Yours” is about loosing a loved one that you never had. However all three works of art show how hard loosing a loved one can be. They also have a similar tone in all three works as well. In both poems and the song, the tone is very sad. “Silence the pianos with a muffled drum”(Auden) is one way how the tone is set in that because everyone likes music and when it stops, everything becomes quiet, and dull. Puff Daddy creates a sad tone in the first couple lines of his song. “Goes out, to everyone, that has lost someone That they truly loved” (Combs). When the song first starts he says these couple of words which gets the audience to think of the loved ones they lost which puts makes them a little sad. Finally, one of the ways Teasdale sets up tone is with this quote “put out

My senses, leave me deaf and blind” (Teasdale). If she is willing to go deaf and blind puts the reader and a sad mood because they feel bad for her. The overall tone in all of these works is depressing and sad.

               “I Am Not Yours” by Sara Teasdale, “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Dadddy’ and “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” by W.H. Auden all have many similarities.  All three deal with themes that have to deal with losing a loved one and how hard it can be to overcome it. They also have similar tones which are very sad and depressing because they are all dealing with a loss and trying to cope with it.