Question

Neutral Tones

By Thomas Hardy

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.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of 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.

1. Sum up the story told in this poem. In lines 1 - 12, what is the dramatic situation? What has happened in the interval between the experience related in these lines and the reflection in the last stanza?

Answer 1

Hello!

Firstly , I'm explaining you the story below ;

In the above poem the speaker looks back to a certain fateful day in winter.two lovers meet perhaps for the last time to decide the fate of their relationship .The scene is set in the countryside it is so dull that even the sun cannot breakthrough ,the speaker ,a victim learning the hard truth is back to where it all began.

The first 3 stanzas focus on the past meeting of two lovers ;the final quatrain is a reflection of that meeting , a memory (Here I mean mostly the last meeting )it is quiet evident from the speaker's tone that there was nothing much remaining of their relationship as they stood near the wintry pond , there is some tension in the atmosphere there is some kind of mistrust and suspicion it seems as though questions raised years ago are still unanswered and all those smiles are painfully false, in the end we that is the readers like me and you are left to make conclusions .

Through memory the speaker reminds himself of the loss of now a indifferent partner and the consequences of being deceived in love .There is some ambiguity ,there is no certain or specific end or conclusion but it can be seen that the poet is uncomfortable .

Dramatic situations;

The still water in the pond suggests that the relationship isn't going anywhere, the greying leaves suggest that just like the decaying leaves the relationship is dying and it's grey colourless suggests that the relationship has no element of life left in it .The bitter grin of of the lover here is compared to an ominous bird a-wing.The pain is furthur intensified with Puns on keen,wring, edge.

Here, I am concluding the last stanza ;

There is some kind of pain it seems as though it was this moment that spelled the death of their relationship ,but even more pain and suffering followed in the deceptions and wrongs.The poet here has suffered intense pain something he can never forget and he feels betrayed .They also imply physical .The vagueness and generalized tone of this last stanza implies that the assertion "love deceives ","wrings with wrongs" is generalisation that applies to all love and not a particular kind or is not just limited to the speaker's love.

Thankyou, hope this helped!