“Neutral Tones” is a lyric poem composed by the English Victorian novelist and poet Thomas Hardy in 1867. The poem consists of four quatrains and details the breakup of a love affair on a winter day. Despite being composed when Hardy was 27, the poem was not published until three decades later, in the 1898 collection Wessex Poems. At that point in his career, Hardy had moved away from publishing novels after Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) were met with protest and critique. Their stark explorations of sexuality and religious doubt went against social conventions at the time. For the remainder of his life—he died in 1928—Hardy only wrote poetry and plays. His poems were widely praised and earned back his positive reputation. In 1910, he earned an Order of Merit from the King of England for artistic achievement.

One of Hardy’s most widely known poems, “Neutral Tones” highlights the poet’s ability to convey melancholy over lost love and create a despairing atmosphere through precise descriptions of setting. The poem’s rural locale and tone of pessimism are hallmarks of Hardy’s creative writing. In contemporary times, Hardy is considered one of the greatest English writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Poet Biography

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset, England, on June 2, 1840, to Thomas Hardy, Sr., a stonemason, and his wife, Jemima Hand Hardy. He was the eldest of four siblings, including Mary (b. 1841), with whom he was close; Henry (b. 1851); and Kate (b. 1856). Hardy’s mother was well read and encouraged Hardy’s reading. At school, Hardy excelled in academic pursuits, but due to his family’s financial circumstances, his formal education ended when he turned 16. Hardy then apprenticed with an architect, and this experience allowed him to move to London in 1862 and enroll at King’s College. There, he pursued architecture further and won prizes for his work. He was hired by Arthur Blomfield’s practice, which specialized in church renovation.

It was in London where Hardy met Eliza Bright Nicholls, a housemaid, and began a relationship with her. The ending of their engagement inspired the writing of “Neutral Tones” in 1867. That same year, Hardy returned to Dorset because he did not like the class stratification he found in London. He wrote his first novel, but it failed to find a publisher. His next two efforts, Desperate Remedies (1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), were published anonymously.

In 1870, Hardy met Emma Lavinia Gifford. Their courtship inspired Hardy’s successful 1873 novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, which was serialized under his own name. In 1874, he and Emma married, and he published Far From the Madding Crowd, which is set in Wessex, his fictionalized template for southwest England. The popular success of the novel allowed him to leave architecture and devote himself to full-time writing. Hardy remained involved in the preservation of architecture and joined the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He published another popular novel, The Return of the Native, in 1878.

In 1885, Hardy designed a house for himself and Emma called Max Gate. Once they moved in, Hardy wrote two of his most famous novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891). The latter book was controversial due to its subject matter of country girl Tess’s sexual seduction by the wealthy Alec d’Urberville. Hardy’s next novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), was similarly met with a negative response due to its apparent attack on the institution of marriage. Emma didn’t like that the book could be read as autobiographical. She and Hardy became increasingly estranged by his subject choices, their inability to have children, and her erratic behavior. By 1898, she had removed herself to live in the attic rooms at Max Gate.

Hardy’s last published novel was The Well-Beloved (1897). Afterward, Hardy turned to writing exclusively in the genres of drama and poetry. He published his first poetry collection, Wessex Poems, in 1898. In 1901, Hardy followed up with Poems of the Past and the Present, and from 1904 to 1908, he worked on a closet drama about the Napoleonic Wars called The Dynasts. In 1908, he joined a local theater group, known as the Dorchester Dramatic and Debating Society. A play he wrote for them, adapted from his novel The Trumpet Major, became an international success. This led to a long collaboration between Hardy and the Society, who then became known as the Hardy Players. In 1910, Hardy was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first of 25 nominations throughout his lifetime, although he never won.

Hardy hired a young secretary, Florence Emily Dugdale, in 1908, and the two became emotionally attached to each other. Upon Emma’s death in 1912, Hardy wrote a series of poems about his feelings of regret at their estrangement as well as her passing. These elegies and laments were collected in Poems 1912-1913 and are considered among his greatest achievements. While he was visited by Eliza Bright Nicholls after Emma’s death, Hardy decided to marry Florence instead. Hardy’s collections of poetry during this period included Satires of Circumstance (1914), Moments of Vision (1917), and the Collected Poems (1919). These were followed by Late Lyrics and Earlier With Many Other Verses (1922), Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925), and Winter Words for Various Moods and Metres (1928).

Ill with pleurisy, Hardy died at Max Gate on January 11, 1928, with Florence at his side. His heart was buried near Emma and his parents, while his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.

Poem text

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.

Hardy, Thomas. “Neutral Tones.” 1867. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The speaker recalls standing with another by “a pond” (Line 1) in the winter. The landscape was bleak due to the time of year. The sun seemed bleached, and the grass was dead. There were “gray” (Line 4) leaves on the ground. In the second stanza, the speaker notes how the person with them looked at them as if they couldn’t translate who they were. Despite exchanging dialogue, the couple couldn’t conclude what they meant to one another. The speaker notes that as the conversation continued, the other person’s expression turned from a stilted “smile” (Line 9) into a bitter “grin” (Line 11). The speaker then says that time has passed. They remember this moment as the first of many “keen lessons” (Line 13) regarding betrayal, which can be seen by the other’s countenance and the bleak landscape that acts as a symbol of dead love.