Not since Auden's 'Stop All the Clocks' in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral had a piece of funerary verse made such an impression on the nation. In the days immediately after the service, there was frantic correspondence and speculation about the poem's possible provenance. "Systems crashed and telephone lines were blocked at the Times," reported columnist Philip Howard, and the lines were attributed variously to Immanuel Kant, Joyce Grenfell and nameless Native Americans.