Thomas Hardy was an influential British writer and poet whose work focuses on rural life, class distinctions and conflict, and the shared human experiences of love and disappointment. “Neutral Tones,” written in 1867 and originally published in the 1898 collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses, is a poem about the end of a relationship and its demoralizing effect on the speaker.
In the poem, the speaker remembers the dreary winter day that marked the end of his relationship with an unnamed partner. The speaker describes the boredom and bitterness on his ex-lover's face as their conversation brings the relationship to an end. White sunlight falls on a few gray ash leaves beside a pond, and this scene is forever entwined with the speaker's disillusionment about love.
Wessex Poems and Other Verses was Hardy's first significant poetry collection, and it received a mixed critical reception upon publication due to its uneven and idiosyncratic nature. In general, Hardy's reputation as a novelist outshines his status as a poet, though he himself seems to have preferred poetry. Hardy's poetry had a profound influence on modern poets such as Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, Philip Larkin, and Donald Hall, showing how the writer inspired generations to come.
