Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy: what it is about, its context, and how Hardy uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'We stood by a pond that winter day', 'And the sun was white, as though chidden of God', 'the starving sod', 'Over tedious riddles of years ago', 'The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing', 'Like an ominous bird a-wing', 'Keen lessons that love deceives', 'And a pond edged with greyish leaves'.
Form: four quatrains with enclosed rhyme, and the cyclical structure that returns to the pond.
Context: Hardy's pessimism and the end of a relationship remembered years later.
Comparisons with When We Two Parted, Winter Swans and The Farmer's Bride.
