Auden substantially rewrote the poem several years later as a cabaret song for the singer Hedli Anderson.
The poem experienced renewed popularity after being read in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), which also led to increased attention on Auden's other work.
The poem was five stanzas long when it first appeared in the 1936 verse play The Ascent of F6, written by Auden and Christopher Isherwood.
[1] In the play, the poem was put to music by the composer Benjamin Britten and read as a blues work.
[2] Auden decided to re-write several poems for Anderson to perform as cabaret songs, including "Funeral Blues", and was working on them as early as 1937.
[5] This version was first published in the 1938 anthology Poems of To-Day, Third Series, by the English Association, and also appeared in The Year's Poetry, 1938, compiled by Denys Kilham Roberts and Geoffrey Grigson (London, 1938), titled "Blues".
[13] Joseph Warren Beach notes that in the revised version of the poem, the first two stanzas are tied to the everyday world, referencing mundane things such as airplanes and telephones.
The poem is read by Matthew, a character portrayed by John Hannah, at the funeral of his partner Gareth.
[18] It is the English contribution to the statue commemorating the Heysel Stadium disaster, where a retaining wall collapsed, resulting in 39 deaths on 29 May 1985, when Liverpool F.C.