Poetry
Third Year
Lecture
one
Thomas
Hardy`s Neutral Tones
Neutral Tones
We stood by a pond Winter day,
And the sun was white as though children of
God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod:
They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing…
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
Here
Hardy critiques certain social constraints that hindered the lives of those
living in the 19th century. He comes across bloodlines and the
boundaries of classes.
- Fate takes great role in the
artworks of him.
- The smile on your mouth was
the deadest thing
live enough to have
strength to die; here Hardy uses oxymoron between smile and deadest thing.
· Structurally accounting, Neutral Tones is a short poem arraigned in four
tetrameter quatrains.
· The four stanzas of the poem might relate to the four seasons of the
year.
· Alliteration employed in "And a few leaves lay on the starving
sod"
· The metaphor of the" few leaves" symbolizes the end of an era,
hinting towards the dying of life.
· The sense pf pessimism was caused by many things: the industrialization
of Britain which meant that
the traditional way of life in his country roots were lost; the expansion of
the British empire which he opposed; his
unhappy first marriage, and his fear and dislike of change.