Neutral Tones Thomas Hardy Analysis

The different groups of people within the poem represent the different stages of life. At the beginning of the poem it talks about a young boy and his dog and swimmers. Several lines down it talks about “young lovers” and then families.

This poem is happy and cheerful, it is about love and nature. The poem My Love is presumably written about Lowell's late wife Maria. In it, Lowell writes about how much he loves this woman and how perfect and awesome her love is. He talks about how selfless and fair she is, how kind and wide her heart is, and how she is a blessing to be with. The mood of this poem is cheerful and appreciative. Summer Storm is about the feeling of everything before a storm, what it's like to be in a storm, and the calm a storm has when it parts. Lowell uses so much imagery in this piece that it makes the reader feel like they are in the storm. Another poem by Lowell is called The Moon, he compares the moon to his soul. The tone of this poem is very sad, angry, and lonely. It seemed like his personal tragedies may have prompted him to write this piece. Lastly, there is Song, which is about a fair bud of a lily. The sun, wind, and rain take care of it and it grows into a beautiful woman-flower, but sadly and suddenly it is struck by death during the process of its growth. One may inquire that this poem may have been prompted by one of his person tragedies.

Hardy initially uses similes to illustrate the bleak landscape, referring to the “sun [as] white” and leaves as “grey”, to emphasise his sorrowful opinion of love. Specific diction of bleak words strongly communicates his message of love being hopeless and sorrowful. He also uses personification of “starving sod”, to allude that the earth is frozen and desiring nutrients which it lacks. This creates an undesirable setting and mood of despair and sorrow expressing how he perceives love. In contrast, Browning orientates an inviting, cheerful setting through the use of similes. The scene is vibrant with “little waves that leap” and “warm sea-scented beach[es]”, allowing the reader to perceive it as joyful. This illustrates how he regards love as an uplifting experience, which brings people together. He structures his poem with no stanzas, allowing for the reader to follow the radiant journey of love. In contrast, Hardy includes stanzas allowing him to express his message though new topics. They consist of the bleak setting, his former partners eyes, her bitter smile and his message of how all love disappoints. He includes an enclosed rhyme scheme, presenting the entrapment of love, expressing no freedom and joy in relationships. In opposition, Browning uses anaphora of “and” to express how the speaker’s mind is not in the moment, looking ahead to the future where they reunite with their lover. It is evident that Hardy conveys his message of love as sorrowful and full of despair, in contrast Browning message reveals love as gracious and

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

“Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims is an excellent of example of an author using many types of literary terms to emphasize his theme of a love that is imperfect yet filled with acceptance. In, this poem Nims uses assonance, metaphor, and imagery to support his theme of “Imperfect, yet realistic love”.

In stanza six, we see the end of visiting hour, and the persona’s loss of control as he is overran with emotion. The phrase, “black figure in her white cave” creates an image of an intruder in her sanctuary. The black and white contrast suggests he is a shadow of his former self and also that he is trying to detach himself. The phrase, “clumsily rises” gives connotations of his state as he is physically affected by his feeling of loss. Furthermore, “swimming waves of a bell” is a metaphor which has connotations of water. This is used to illustrate that he is drowning in the realisation that she is dying. Finally, “fruitless fruits” is an oxymoron used to reinforce that there is no hope or going back, for her.

In this poem, we see the tone light and free, also much imagery. We see this immediately with the first line saying, the “afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight” (1). We immediately get a sense of a beautiful day, maybe even fall with the trees descriptions in the following line, “trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves” (2). Lowell shows such beautiful imagery throughout her poem especially in her first two stanzas, that when we read that they are in the middle of war in the third stanza, that it is slightly shocking. That there are “two little boys, lying flat on their faces” (7) and that they are, “carefully gathering red berries” (8). Here Lowell shows that it is still a beautiful day but the darker reality is that they are currently in a war. Then we start to see the poem more in a melancholy light. That these two little boys are picking berries to save for later, instead of enjoying it right now. However one day the boys wish that “there will be no more war” (10), and that then, they could in fact enjoy their berries, their afternoon and “turn it in my fingers”. In this poem, we clearly see the different tones throughout. Lowell shows us the light tone, then a more melancholy tone and then finally a hopeful tone.

The tone of the speaker was very sad, cold and lonely for misses his father. Evidence that support that he misses his father can be found in the poem. The second and the third stanza reflects how he feels about the weather and I think he meant the fall season in which he uses a cold tone “the garden is bare now. The ground is cold, brown and old”, he clearly just mentioning the negative sounding around fall. A lonely tone also found in the last few stanzas, when he mentioned that his food is almost cooked “White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame oil and garlic. And my own loneliness. What more could I, a young man, want.”. The part where he said, “And my own

In the next stanza, the line "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay", the poet is now using imagery with the waters, however it can also be a metaphorical representation of life due to

Thomas Hardy sometimes uses the landscape to reflect mood of his characters. Choose two brief extracts (about two pages each) where he does this; one when Tess is happy and another when she is not. How does Hardy reflect Tess's mood through landscape in these extracts? 1)

In the first few lines of the poem, the reader can already receive a feel of the irony as the poet describes the scene of a maiden left behind as her lover falls in battle. The poet illustrates a scene as to where most readers would feel sorrow and sympathy towards the maiden and perhaps have the speaker in the poem enlighten the

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

Wilcox’s diction includes words such as, “hurt,” “frowning,” “wrath,” which then develops the mood to be depressing. In general, the poem is considered to be depressing. The mood and tone of the poem evidence that although love is hard to attain, once it is attained, it will be able to hurt and harm the ‘lover’. This was

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

The speaker feels that faith has disappeared and has separated her or him from the "ebb and flow" of life. This lost faith is compared to a sea that is very similar to the sea described in the first stanza. Words of lightness and beauty are used once more. The shore "lays like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd." There is a sense of encompassing joy in this phrase. This bright and joyful image is then contrasted by the last five lines of the stanza. "The Sea of Faith" has now retreated, like a tide withdraws from the shore. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the words of these five lines and the words from the first stanza. The sweet "night-air"becomes "the night-wind," and the cliffs that were once "glimmering and vast" are still vast, but only dreary edges. The sea that was "round" and "full" has now left the world empty and exposed. Similarly, the speaker has lost his faith and feels alone and vulnerable.