His use of the colour ‘white’ suggests that his feelings about love are blank (or neutral), lifeless, and even depressing. ‘a grin of bitterness swept thereby/ Like an ominous bird a-wing…’ "Neutral Tones" by Thomas Hardy is very neutral in tone; its melancholic note is created by a narrator reflecting on the termination of a relationship. (Loss of) Love: far from being a conventional love poem, 'Neutral Tones' deals with the death of love and feelings of loss.

The man and the woman are inert; they merely stand by the pond. This stanza continues in this dramatic fashion with the narrator claiming that leaves lay starving, personifying them and simultaneously suggesting they are dying. Most of his Much of Hardy’s work is marked by a strong streak of pessimism and this poem, Neutral Tones, is no exception to that rule. Neutral Tones Analysis First stanza. The powerful language creates a sense of a man with strong emotions. I have numerous aspects to safeguard my viewpoint. The first line uses mostly monosyllabic words marking the lack of any movement. One of the beauties of this poem is the fact that you never really know why the poet has such strong feelings towards their former partner. In addition, the sun and pond are circular and non-angular in shape; this portrays that Hardy feels as if there is no escape from the negativity that he finds to be attached to his love and that it is never ending, in a loop. By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our “Neutral Tones” is a poem by Thomas Hardy. The man and the woman have very little to speak; what they do utter, hastens the death of their love. (Neutral Tones makes a nice comparison to any of the 'emma' poems, particularly 'Beeny Cliff' if you want a contrasting poem, or 'Shut Out That Moon' if you want one to compare with it.)

In the first line of this stanza the narrator suggests that their... Third stanza. It contrasts with the typical colour of the sun – yellow – a symbol for vibrancy and happiness, both emotions that Hardy does not feel about or achieve from loving the woman. There’s seldom a wasted word in his poetry.The cruel reality of this poem is we never really learn what has caused this heightened level of angst and fury.

Once again when one thinks of ash they think of fire, and possibly cremation and therefore death. The ‘starving sod’ suggests that Hardy feels that his relationship is ‘starving’, as if it were not being ‘fed’ enough love to keep it strong and happy and it has therefore been reduced to ‘sod’ – treaded on and not special.The leaves that ‘had fallen from an ash, and were gray’ symbolise the way that Hardy and his lover have also ‘fallen’ out of love. An obvious assumption would be infidelity but this is never explicitly stated. His negative feelings about love are conveyed especially effectively here because they are expressed right at the beginning of the poem – this sets an unhappy tone for the first stanza, which deepens further into the poem.In the second line of the first stanza, Hardy describes the sun as ‘white’ and ‘chidden of God’.

Thank youI’m using this to help me revise at school and I need to tell you it is one of the best things you can go to to get ideas for your writing and evaluations of poems. Neutral Tones By Thomas Hardy.

The earth appears to be starving; it lacks life giving moisture and is frosty perhaps. We stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. This change suggests that Hardy has changed his view about love to a more cynical one, feeling as if love ‘deceives’ and tricks him. One of the most renowned poets and novelists in English literary history, Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the English village of Higher Bockhampton in the county of Dorset. Though he speaks unflatteringly of the woman, he does not seem to blame her for the breakdown. The word ‘chidden’ is an old fashioned one for ‘rebuke’.The third line adds more to the description of the depressing scene. Take what you can, in terms of experience and move on letting go of the resentment. Straight away Hardy invokes a sense of rejection by setting the scene in the winter which people automatically associate with the cold and therefore negative emotions. About this Poet Thank you! This is the hallmark of a good poem. The smile on … Love was something beautiful in the beginning for the two. This is commonplace in romantic literature, one of Hardy’s inspirations was Chares Dickens who used the cold as a Hardy uses really emotive, bordering on melodramatic, language to describe the sun. Throughout Neutral Tones, Hardy effectively communicates his feelings about love using the natural world and its (neutral) colours and characteristics.

If we were to take the following words in isolation: die, grin, bitterness, ominous. His use of rich imagery of the natural world produces a melancholic note about love, which resounds through the whole poem portraying the end of an affair between Hardy and his former lover.The backdrop of the poem is set in the first stanza as a ‘winter day’. This depicts a change in Hardy’s feelings about love from the beginning of the poem – his language starts to show anger, rather than sadness. The language and the metaphors in this part of the poem are complex and difficult to interpret. The scene imprints itself with such force on the narrator’s mind that henceforth every time he thinks of the deceitful nature of love, his mind conjures this scene before his eyes. The only colors that the poet describes are white and grey.

The descriptions in the first stanza are all colourless (neutral tones) which suggests that Hardy feels as if he has no colour in his life, no love. That uncertainty creates a dramatic tension. This first stanza paints a very glum picture indeed.In the first line of this stanza the narrator suggests that their former partner had a roving eye. He feels idle yet unsettled in the sense that whilst he cannot do anything to stop his affair from falling apart, he does not wish for it to do so.