Neutral tones

poet

Thomas Hardy

context

speaker reflects back to a moment in their life when they realised that love had died them and their partner

the consider what this moment has meant to them since

title gives a clue that this poem is not one full of exuberant emotion or heartbreak the writer’s tone is neutral and unemotional like the lovers

“We stood by a pond that winter day”

• pathetic fallacy → bleak and cold → reflects misery, symbolic of end of relationship

• noun ‘pond’ → still / stagnant

“They had fallen from an ash, and were grey”

• imagery → death,cremation

• lacks life just like they’re relationship

• relationship has become stagnant symbolic of past problems

‘as eyes that rove’

• simile → ‘rove' = not focused (fatigued)

• lack of recognition after all those years

‘some words played between us to and fro’

• determiner ‘some’ → meaningless, empty words/arguments

• wearisome fight instead of passionate ones

• (back and forth=lack of progress)

“The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing / Alive enough to have strength to die;”

• oxymoron → incompatible (conflict)

• smiles are supposed to represent happiness and joy but hers lacks liveliness

• the have strength to let the relationship go but not enough to keep it going

• end stop (semi-colon) → end of relationship

‘Like an ominous bird a-wing…’

• simile

• adjective ‘ominous’ → foreboding

• imagery→ raven associated with death and is flying away from the risk to a hopefully better future

• death of relationship (inevitability)

• ellipsis → continuity → the moment still lingers in his mind

“Since then, keen lessons that love deceives and wrings with wrong”

• time marker + caesura → now in the present

• sharp ‘k’ sound → depth of the memory

• present tense → tainted view of love

• alliteration ‘wrings with wrong’ → harsh, twisting sound →pain and discomfort

• wrings symbolic of wedding rings

“And a pond edged with greyish leaves”

• cyclical structure → memory still haunts him

• suffix ‘ish’ → 9(compared to grey ash from first stanza) memory is becoming hazier so with time things can improve

structure

• ABBA rhyme scheme of first few stanzas → enclosed in this inner state → lasting power of memory

• 4 quatrains → 4 seasons reflects time passing & memory of relationship

ideas

• Hardy presents the idea of loss in relationships

• Hardy suggest even relationships that are over still have a lasting impact