Love, Loss, and Disillusionment
The wound caused by the speaker’s break-up with his ex hardens him to the world, creating a scar that never quite heals. Rather than being open to experiencing love again after heartbreak, the speaker is convinced that “love deceives, / And wrings with wrong.” Plainly hidden beneath the speaker’s supposed neutrality is his bitter anger. The speaker aligns with the symbolism of winter (death, hibernation, and endings), apparently forgetting that seasons are cyclical and the rebirth of spring always comes next.
The Persistence of Memories
The speaker of this poem looks back and reflects upon the end of a relationship, which he still feels strongly about despite presenting a facade of passivity. Hardy opens the poem by telling us that this is the memory of the speaker: "We stood by a pond that winter day," then details the memories of this day from the speaker's perspective. The speaker remembers details about the fateful day of the break-up, such as his emotions, his surroundings, and the weather. These details "have shaped" the speaker's cynical perspective about love, which he considers immoral and deceitful. In this way, the poem is about the persistence of memories that were particularly traumatic or emotional. Research has shown that memories of emotionally difficult events have a stronger lasting effect over time than neutral memories. This supports the notion that the neutrality the speaker insists upon is actually a facade, or at least it does not tell the whole story.
The Facade of Neutrality
The poem’s title displays the speaker’s insisted-upon impartiality after a break-up. This neutrality is evident in the poem’s plain language and muted color palette. The word “tones” can refer to both color and inflection of language (the general character or attitude of something). For example, rather than shining yellow or gold, the sun shines white. White is achromatic, meaning that it has no hue. The fallen ash leaves lining the “starving sod” beside the pond are gray. The bleakness of the scene serves as a foil, contrasting the speaker's anger brewing beneath his neutral exterior. The speaker's bitterness cuts through the supposed neutrality just as the harsh syllables in “God-curst sun” stand out against the rest of the poem’s plain language.
