Summary of neutral tones -thomas hardy?

This is an early poem written in 1867. The Words 'Neutral Tones' in the title paint a picture drained

of colour. And Hardy starts the poem with two people in the now-failed relationship, 'We',

immediately followed by a whole verse that paints a picture of where they were standing, by a pond

on a winter's day. The second verse looks at the woman's eyes and the boredom in them, and

remembers the desultory Words between the two people, the communication that is no longer a

pleasure. The third looks at the dead smile on the woman's mouth, the smile that is no longer alive

and joyous. In the last verse, Hardy notes that whenever he experiences a painful reminder of

deceiving love, he pictures the woman's face, and the winter landscape by the pond.

The setting is a winter landscape and the poem describes the winter of their love. There are no

colours, except for 'white', 'gray' and 'grayish'; there is no warmth in the sun or in their

relationship, no emotions except for tedium ('tedious riddles') and bitterness. The rhyme scheme is

ABBA, a pattern that encloses, entraps, allows no way forward; the first and last lines of the

quatrains rhyme and thus they imprison the verse. In fact, the whole poem is shaped like this, as the

last verse repeats the description of the first verse by the pond, with the God-curst sun and the tree.

The rhythm of the lines is inconsistent, halting and stumbling, going nowhere like the relationship.

This is particularly the case in lines like: 'They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.'

The poem is filled with Words of depression and death: 'dead', 'chidden', 'God-curst', 'starving',

'ominous', bitterness', 'lost', 'tedious', 'fallen'. Further evoking the painful experience of the end

of a relationship, in the third verse, oxymorons provide strange yokings, pairings of Words that

should not be together, like 'deadest thing / Alive' and 'a grin of bitterness'.

The sounds and rhythms add to the impression of depression and lack of vitality. Assonance and

alliteration link Words and sounds, and the sound is devoid of energy and vitality. In verse 4, the

'ee' sound links 'keen' (painful), 'deceives', 'me', 'tree', 'leaves' - in other Words, the heartache of

love is linked in Hardy's mind and in his poem to the winter setting. Alliteration links 'wrings'

with 'wrong'. The rhythm of the poem lurches beyond the second line and stumbles to a cesura

after 'Your face', staggers on again through heavily stressed monosyllables 'and the God-curst sun'

to the next cesura. It drags itself through this listless list 'and a', 'and a', and finally peters out with

the halting rhythms of 'And a pond edged with grayish leaves.' Many of the Words in this last

verse are monosyllables; several contain heavy sounds with weighty ds and gs: 'deceives', 'pond',

'edged', 'grayish'.

The tone of this poem seems both bitter and profoundly depressed. It's written in the first person,

but feels strangely detached to me - perhaps because this is a relationship that no longer involves

the persona. It is unclear whether the poet is simply stating a fact or whether he is blaming himself

or the woman. Is the poem primarily about himself, or about the pain of love?