Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”
-- Speaker (Line 4)

Importance: This line occupies the final line of the first stanza, and represents a slight shift from the preceding three lines. When the poem begins, the speaker is issuing commands for objects in his house to be “cut off” (1) and stripped of their function. He desires utter silence, reflected in how he wants the dog to cease “barking” (2) and wishes to “silence the pianos” (3). This line, where the speaker wants to “bring out the coffin” (4), represents a slight opening to the outside world, but only to the extent that it will mourn the death of the loved one – thus explaining the poem’s title “Funeral Blues.” He will only interact with other people if they are “mourners” (4); they seemed to be defined only by the fact that they are coming to mourn, as nowhere else in the poem are they mentioned. As a...