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Neutral Tones
Content:
Hardy is reflecting on his relationship with Emma - he is lacking in any emotion (apathy)
The speaker addresses an estranged lover and reminisces about a moment in the past which anticipated the
demise of their relationship
The first three stanzas describe the incident, the fourth reflects on this incident and the nature of love
It is a sad and pessimistic poem that portrays love as painful and doomed
Key themes:
Bitterness towards love and failed relationship
Pathetic Fallacy - environment mirrors state of relationship
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Pond is significant because conveys lack of movement from beginning to end, and that life is a cycle
which cannot be stopped
Neutral tones - some irony since poem actually carries strong negative emotional appeal
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Emphasises how Hardy came to feel about Emma - no emotion, lacking in passion
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No colour = feeling between them is neutral, suggests colourless mood
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Soothing but depressing language highlights sadness and emotions in narrator
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Melancholic tone because narrator is reflecting
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Colourless tone emphasises narrator's feeling of detachment despite being in first person
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Paradox (a bit of irony as well I guess)- Hardy's use of paradox in stanza three reflects the pain
of his emotions, conflicting ideas = love is fated to fail
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Leaves strong impression on reader, enhances emotional turmoil
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Cynical about love, bitter poem
Language analysis

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
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Pond - water is still/ stagnant, like relationship
...

Winter day - lifeless season, rhymes with gray to
emphasise bleakness
White - cold, monochromatic, connotations of
sterile environment, drained of all vitality
...

Few leaves lay - reminder of the end of a natural
cycle of life and death
Starving sod - personification and alliteration
(sibilance) emphasises soil's lack of nutrition
and nourishment
Fallen - symbolises how narrator has fallen out
of love
Leaves are 'gray' and from an 'ash' - these
reinforce the gloominess of the scene, creating
a dismal, dreary atmosphere
Ash’ is grey and burnt out, like their love
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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…
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It is also a paradox (nothing can
be more dead than something else) to show the
ache of his emotions
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- it's alive enough to make it
painful – ‘die’ suggests it was love fated to fail
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Curst- the sun is no longer just told off, he is
cursed - Hardy is BITTER/ RESENTFUL/
SULLEN
Repetition at the beginning and end - same
scenery, but at the end it is less poetic
symbolising how the narrator has learnt his
lesson
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Middle lines are 'trapped' in the
middle echoing how narrator felt in relationship?
Cyclic: Words 'gray' 'pond' + 'God' repeated at the end giving poem cyclic quality - reflects the continuous
'flow'/ fluidity of life



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