Neutral Tones

I think that this poem is about a couple that are together even though their love has died.

As many of Hardy's other poems tend to be, this poem is also fairly depressing. The atmosphere the poem dwells in is very gloomy and the language used only enhances this mood. For example, vocabulary such as 'bitterness', 'deadest' and 'decieves' are all very powerful negative words. They are all used to connote with a bad situation which makes the situation the poems characters are placed in seem all the more dreadfull.

'The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing, alive enough to have strength to die' is a line from stanza three that really stands out to me. The words used a very contrasting to each other, for instance a 'smile' is something that you do when you are happy or being welcoming and friendly, however this smile is described as being 'the deadest thing'. Not only does this mean that there are various other things that are 'dead' about this character but out of all of them their smile is the 'deadest' which adds a very strong impact and intensness to this smile. The two charcters described must really not like each other anymore if they can't even bare to bring a simple smile to their faces and mean it.

Hardy also describes the smile as being 'alive enough to have strength to die' which is a very ironic and morbid way to describe something. Since 'alive' and 'die' are the exact opposite to each other it pinpoints this part of the poem so it stands out and ,again, adds more bitterness to the emotion or rather lack of.