A comparison of the poets present romantic love in 'Neutral Tones' by Thomas Hardy and 'Winter Swans' by Owen Sheers Anonymous 12th Grade

In the lyric poem Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy, the speaker reflects back to a particular moment in their life when they realised that the love had died between them and the person they were in a relationship with. They consider what this moment has meant to them since. Winter Swans describes a couple that are walking through the ‘gulping mud’ alongside a lake in winter. They are ‘silent and apart’. When the swans arrive, the pair stop to watch the birds and their ‘show of tipping unison’. The swans could be seen as reflecting the relationship between the couple. Both poems Neutral Tones and Winter Swans are about the temporal nature of love and the complications and conflicts that arrive in long term relationships. However, whereas in neutral tones, the poet is talking about a couple were not able to regain the love they once had for another, in Winter Swans the poet is exploring the superficial nature of love.

In Neutral tones, the poet uses the motif of draining color to reflect how the love has drained from their relationship. “The sun was white”, “They had fallen from an ash and were grey”, “and a pond edged with greyish leaves”. Here, the repeated use of the colors white and grey are particularly important because they...