Neutral Tones Summary & Analysis
by Thomas Hardy

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The Full Text of “Neutral Tones”

1We stood by a pond that winter day, 

2And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, 

3And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; 

4– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. 

5Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 

6Over tedious riddles of years ago; 

7And some words played between us to and fro 

8On which lost the more by our love. 

9The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing 

10Alive enough to have strength to die; 

11And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 

12Like an ominous bird a-wing…. 

13Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, 

14And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me 

15Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, 

16And a pond edged with grayish leaves. 

  • “Neutral Tones” Introduction

    • "Neutral Tones" is a bleak and pessimistic poem that depicts the end of a love affair and the psychological aftereffects. Thomas Hardy wrote the poem in 1867, though it was not published until 1898 in the collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses. The poem's tone reflects the general skepticism that runs throughout Hardy's work; his novels, such as Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, are renowned for their unflinching look at the realities of Victorian life.

  • “Neutral Tones” Summary

    • The speaker begins by referencing a memory about a particular winter's day. The speaker and the addressee of the poem—a former lover—were standing by a pond beneath a sun that seemed bleached white, as though it had been scolded by God. A few gray leaves were scattered on the parched ground, fallen from an ash tree.

      The speaker comments that the lover/ex-lover's eyes looked bored as they gazed upon the speaker, as if looking at a tired riddle from long ago. The two had a short conversation about who had lost more because of the relationship (though line 8 could also be read as meaning that this specific conversation itself actively diminished the amount of love between the two people).

      The speaker then mentions the ex-lover's smile on that particular day, describing it as almost dead but with just enough life left to allow it to finally die in this moment. It was a bitter smile, which the speaker compares to a fearsome bird taking flight.

      Since that day, the speaker has learned that love is deceitful and causes harm. This life lesson stirs the memory of that winter's day—the other person's face, the sun, the pond, the trees, and the fallen leaves.

  • “Neutral Tones” Themes

    • Theme Love and Loss

      Love and Loss

      “Neutral Tones” is a melancholic poem that looks at the dying moments of a relationship between the speaker and his (or her) lover. Defeated in tone, the poem shows the way in which love contains the possibility of loss. It also demonstrates how this loss can completely alter a person’s perception of the world and the person they once loved. Through the example of the speaker and the speaker's lover, the poem shows how embracing love always involves risking painful loss and estrangement, and it even suggests that all love might inherently deceptive.

      The speaker captures a very specific moment in the poem: the death of the love between two people. Though the reader doesn’t know anything about the history of the relationship (including the gender of the speaker or the lover), the speaker creates a vivid, detailed depiction of exactly what the couple’s loss looks like. In a sense, the reader is an uncomfortable voyeur in the poem. The speaker is talking directly to his or her lover/ex-lover, as shown by the use of the second-person "you" throughout, forcing the reader into the uncomfortable role of being an eavesdropper. This discomfort foisted on the reader is a deliberate effect: rather than the reader simply reading the description of the painful loss of a relationship, the reader must "experience" that lingering pain by being forced to listen to the speaker address the speaker's ex-lover. It's the difference between your friend telling you about a painful break-up they had, and you being stuck next to your friend and their significant other during the breakup!

      The poem further emphasizes its bleak outlook of love by subverting images and interactions that might typically accompany a scene in which two people are very much in love. The lovers are taking—or have taken—a walk by a pond. This might once have been a pleasant activity, but now it is overshadowed by symbols of decay (e.g. the greying leaves).

      This loss and decay doesn’t stop with the lovers themselves. Rather, the entire world seems to be altered by the death of their relationship. The sun, which is usually a symbol of life and happiness, is whitened as though it has been scolded by God. This change emphasizes the sense that something has gone irrevocably wrong. Likewise, the words between the lovers seem only to speak of loss, and the ex-lover's smile contains no joy. Instead it is “ominous” and full of “bitterness.” The poem thus highlights the way in which loss of love can completely alter an individual’s perception of the world—once happy things become representations of their own loss.

      Finally, the poem indicates that this change is permanent; there is no way to escape from such loss. Ultimately, the speaker thus suggests that love is always deceptive, because it pretends to be positive while hiding the fact that it can alter reality in negative ways. Once the poem has established an atmosphere of complete pain and heartbreak, the speaker returns to the images of the first stanza. This emphasizes that even as the end of the relationship causes a return to reality, it also traps the speaker within all this pain. That is, this is a journey that has led the speaker back to the beginning, with only the lesson that “love deceives” to show for it. Love deceives, argues the poem, because it masks the risk of loss that comes with any relationship.

      “Neutral Tones” is therefore a sorrowful poem that does not seek to idealize love or even to claim that the speaker’s relationship was ever good in the first place. It brings the reader into the sense of pointlessness and fatigue that can accompany a break-up, and argues against convenient answers to or remedies for heartache.

    • Theme Memory and Emotion

      Memory and Emotion

      “Neutral Tones” is an expression of emotional trauma, and it argues that some emotional events leave a mark on the memory that cannot be erased. In the poem, pain dulls over time to become a kind of melancholic boredom, in which the memory of the event is an unwelcome constant in the mind of the speaker. Some events in life, the poem argues, can never be completely overcome.

      The poem establishes itself as a memory from the outset, first revisiting the initial event—the conversation at the pond in winter—and then showing the way that its emotional trauma has continued to influence the speaker’s mindset. The poem takes place in the past tense, instantly setting the poem up as a description of somewhat distant events. Within this memory, almost all of the particulars are linked to the senses. The speaker remembers the whiteness of the sun, the dryness of the earth, the particular arc of the addressee’s smile—all of these contribute to a stark and vivid picture that makes the memory seem as real in the poem’s present as it was at the time when the event occurred. These vibrant, if sorrowful, descriptions demonstrate how the past remains alive, even though its presence is a negative force in the speaker’s mind.

      The ellipsis that ends stanza 3 suggest that a shift is coming, a move away from the painful memory that has been discussed so far. However, the poem immediately undermines this attempt at emotional distance. Right after the ellipsis, the speaker returns to the same sensory memories described in the previous stanzas, this time in condensed form. The poem portrays the memory, then, as somehow inescapable. It seems that it has consolidated over time, in much the same way that the fourth stanza encapsulates the three previous ones all at once. This is likely because of the force of the emotion involved, which, though the speaker paints the memory in “neutral tones,” has continued to shape the speaker's life. The poem therefore argues that there is a kind of natural limit to the extent to which people can control their emotional memory. Presumably, the speaker would rather not feel this way—but the cyclical, suppressed set-up of the poem shows that sometimes there is no choice, no escape.

      “Neutral Tones” does not offer a hopeful ending. Instead, it demonstrates the trauma of strong negative emotion and its effects on an individual’s psychology. In four short stanzas, the speaker draws out the way in which memory is not only something that people have, but also something that happens to them. There is a resigned lack of agency in the speaker’s “neutral tones” that implies a powerlessness with no easy solution, a devastating memory that will always hold a place in the speaker's mind and, therefore, life.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Neutral Tones”

    • Lines 1-4

      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. 

      The poem begins with "We," a plural personal pronoun. This instantly makes the reader question who, exactly, is contained within this group—that is, whom the speaker is addressing. The first line also establishes the past tense as the dominant tense of the poem, suggesting that what is to follow is a memory (shared by whomever this "we" consists of).

      Though the language is simple almost the point of banality in the first line, the mention of "that" particular day draws the reader in. That is, though the setting seems unremarkable, something about that specific day has remained significant in the speaker's psyche. The simplicity of the language is also part of the "neutral tones" of the title, suggesting a psychological conflict between the emotional moment that transpires and the apparent indifference of the natural world.

      The subsequent lines further reflect the idea of "neutral tones" by suggesting a distinct lack of color. The sun is not warm and yellow, but white, suggesting that it (and by implication, the love affair) has had its life drained away. The whiteness of the sun gives the speaker the sense that the sun has been told off by God; it's as if the sun is not allowed to shine because of some wrongdoing.

      Two interesting points arise here. Firstly, Hardy lived during an age of increasing religious pessimism and did himself make the move from Evangelicalism to atheism over the course of his life. With a sense of meaninglessness running through the poem that possibly pertains to this loss of faith, the presence of God here might be a signal of some kind of universal malign intent—a sense of love being doomed to failure. The second point of note is the question of why the sun could incur the wrath of God in the first place. If the sun is usually taken as a symbol of life, warmth, and moral goodness, perhaps it is guilty of providing false hope for love in a world that cannot sustain it. The impotence of the sun is also perhaps suggestive of the "fire" of love going out between the speaker and the person whom the speaker is addressing.

      In lines 3 and 4, the deadness of the natural environment hints at the death of the relationship that following stanzas will recount. It's worth noting that the ash tree is particularly useful for firewood, again hinting at a metaphorical "fire" that has been snuffed out. The pun between "ash" and "gray"—as in, the ash left after a fire—supports this subtly.

      There is also something paradoxical about the natural imagery used in the poem. On the one hand, it does reflect the deadness of the relationship as mentioned above. On the other, it is also anti-symbolic—nature is just being nature and doesn't have any response to the lovers' scenario. This indifference mirrors the growing indifference between the two people in the poem.

    • Lines 5-6

      Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 
      Over tedious riddles of years ago; 

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    • Lines 7-8

      And some words played between us to and fro 
      On which lost the more by our love. 

    • Lines 9-10

      The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing 
      Alive enough to have strength to die; 

    • Lines 11-12

      And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 
      Like an ominous bird a-wing…. 

    • Lines 13-16

      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. 

  • “Neutral Tones” Symbols

    • Symbol The Natural World

      The Natural World

      The poem is bookended by descriptions of nature in the first and final stanza—in fact, both stanzas are contain many of the same natural elements. Rather than being a source of wonder, the natural world in this poem is sterile and almost lifeless. Arguably, the "neutral tones" of the title applies to nature itself—the sun is bleached white, the leaves are gray. On the one hand, then, the natural world represented here takes on the emotional quality of the speaker's dying/dead relationship with the addressee of the poem.

      Conversely, the "neutrality" of the natural world could also be an expression of indifference, perceived through the eyes of the speaker. They feel the emotional weight and significance of the relationship's end, made worse by the sense that whatever happens between them is of no real consequence to the world more generally. There is the preemptive sense of an existential crisis—and, indeed, as a poem written during a fresh rise of religious skepticism, perhaps the indifference of the natural world reflects a more general sense of meaninglessness.

  • “Neutral Tones” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      Alliteration is used on a few occasions in the poem and generally functions as a way of adding emphasis and grouping words together by their general content. Much of this occurs in lines 3 and 4, where the alliterative words draw the reader's focus to the deadness of the environment. For example, the /s/ sounds of "starving sod" direct attention to the fact that the ground itself seems barren, devoid of life.

      Similarly, the /r/ sounds of "rove" and "riddles" link the actions of the eyes with what they perceive—somebody who was once familiar who now seems lost, remote and mysterious. In stanza 4, "wrings" and "wrong" are paired by their alliteration, in this case both being part of the same action.

    • Caesura

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    • Enjambment

    • Paradox

    • Polysyndeton

    • Sibilance

    • Simile

  • “Neutral Tones” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Chidden
    • Sod
    • Ash
    • Rove
    • Wrings
    • Curst
    Chidden
    • Chidden is the past participle of the verb "chide," which means to scold or rebuke.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Neutral Tones”

    • Form

      "Neutral Tones" is comprised of four quatrains. Quatrains are one of the simplest and most recognizable stanza shapes, and accordingly there is something unobtrusive about the way the poem presents itself on the page. This is in keeping with the "neutrality" gestured to in the title.

      However, that's not to say that the poem's content is neutral—in fact, it is melancholic and defeated—but rather that the form in which the poem plays out embodies a kind of indifference. This indifference of form matches the world that the speaker finds him or herself in—a world dominated by the emotional trauma of a broken-off, while also amplifying the speaker's sense of the surrounding environment as enacting a sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness that feeds into the speaker's attitude of defeat.

    • Meter

      "Neutral Tones" is written in meter, but the meter is somewhat awkward and inconsistent. In general, the stanzas of the poem tend to follow a pattern in which the first three lines of each stanza feel like tetrameters: they tend to have four stressed syllables. Take line 1:

      We stood by a pond that winter day

      The pattern in the stanza concludes with a final line that feels more like trimeter, with three stresses. Take line 4:

      They had fallen from an ash and were gray

      But this pattern is irregular throughout the poem, and the meter itself is also inconsistent—some feet are iambic but many are anapests. The first line of the poem, for example, reads iamb, anapest, iamb, iamb:

      We stood | by a pond | that wint- | -er day

      It's an awkward line with a second-foot substitution, but it feels as though it might settle into an iambic pattern. The second line upsets this already precarious sense of rhythm:

      And the sun | was white, | as though chid- | -den of God

      In this line, three out of four feet are anapests. The first and second lines, then, are essentially the opposite of one another.

      Stanza 2 again repeats the pattern, though only through the first foot of line 6; there are still three anapests in line 6, yet in slightly different locations than they were in line 2:

      Your eyes | on me were | as eyes | that rove
      Over te | dious rid | dles of years | ago;

      The inconsistency of the poem's meter has two important effects. Firstly, it creates a sense of difficulty that is appropriate to the subject matter of the end of a relationship. Secondly, by setting up two competing meters, the rhythm of the poem mirrors the painful duality of the two people as they break up, becoming separate entities once again.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      The rhyme scheme of "Neutral Tones" is regular, following an ABBA pattern in each of its four stanzas. This rhyme pattern is known as enclosed rhyme, because of the way the outer two rhymes form a pair surrounding the inner two. The rhyme scheme seems fairly innocuous on first glance, contributing to a sense of the poem's "neutrality" of form that masks the depth of the speaker's emotional pain.

      But there is an echo of another famous example of enclosed rhyming quatrains that could be considered part of the atmosphere of this poem. The ABBA rhyme scheme is common to the Petrarchan sonnet (and sonnets more generally). As the Petrarchan sonnet is closely associated with love poetry, while "Neutral Tones" focuses on a break-up and the bitterness and deception of love more generally, perhaps there is an ironic "bitterness" in the choice of rhyme scheme in "Neutral Tones."

  • “Neutral Tones” Speaker

    • The speaker of the poem is generally taken to be Thomas Hardy himself, with the addressee perhaps being a woman called Tryphena Sparks with whom Hardy had a relationship. However, this isn't explicitly stated in the poem and shouldn't be taken as a given.

      The evidence within the poem suggests that the speaker is someone who has suffered heartbreak, and all of the words in the poem belong to the speaker. It's clear that the speaker has suffered emotional trauma and sees no glimmer of optimism on the horizon.

      Just as important as the speaker's identity is the addressee's. In fact, the reader isn't really invited into the poem at all—it's spoken by the speaker directly to his (or her) lover/ex-lover. The speaker addresses this lover with the second person pronoun, and together the two of them form the "we" of the first line. There is thus an uncomfortable intimacy between the speaker, the addressee, and the reader, with the reader seeming to be a kind of eavesdropper on the speaker's words to the ex-lover.

  • “Neutral Tones” Setting

    • The setting in "Neutral Tones" is twofold. First, the scene described takes place in the past. The way stanza 4 returns to the content of stanza 1 makes it clear that the reader is bearing witness to the speaker's memory, and that overall the truest way of describing the setting is to say that the poem is situated within the speaker's troubled psyche.

      But the literal setting of the memory also is important, so it's fair to describe the setting as a winter's day—in fact, a very specific winter's day (as shown by the use of "that" in line 1) on which this emotional traumatic break-up occurred. Even within the context of this winter scene, colored in "neutral tones" by the white sun and the graying leaves, the reader still experiences the moment through the speaker's sensory memory—it is certainly possible to wonder if the speaker's memory of the bleakness of the day is influenced by the trauma of the breakup.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Neutral Tones”

      Literary Context

      Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and became one of the most successful novelists of the Victorian era. His later novels—works like Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles—challenged Victorian sensibilities, and the often angry reaction to their publication led to him focusing on poetry in his later years (though Hardy wrote "Neutral Tones" before this shift, in the 1860s). "Neutral Tones" wasn't published until over thirty years later, however, in a collection called Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), which comprises 51 poems set in the bleak atmosphere of southwestern England.

      Hardy's collection was met with a mixed reaction—his attempts to formally innovate and refresh what he felt were the stuck mannerisms of Victorian poetry were not universally praised. That said, he was among the most celebrated writers of the era; when he died in 1928, he was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.

      Hardy's work—both prose and poetry—is often considered part of a general trend of Victorian pessimism that saw writers confronting the religious and societal assumptions that had been cast into doubt by scientific advances. A good example of a poem that captures this particular mood is Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach."

      Historical Context

      The Victorian period in which Hardy wrote can be simultaneously described as a time of great advancement and great loss. Because of the scientific developments engendered by people like Charles Darwin (and his less recognized rival Alfred Russel Wallace), the geologist Charles Lyle, and the paleontologist Richard Owen, Victorian writers (and people more generally) were faced with stark evidence that at best cast doubt on the literal interpretation of the Bible and at worst disproved God altogether.

      Hardy in particular felt this loss keenly, but was unflinching in facing up to it in his work. His later novels in particular caused great scandal because they took aim at what he saw as the hypocrisies prevalent in the Victorian era, and also seemed to embody something of Darwin's notion that only the strong survive.

      The historical period more generally was one of technological innovation and expansion, with the British Empire spreading and tightening its hold on the entire globe.

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