 Studying neutral tones by Thomas Hardy. Here's how you can analyse this poem. The poem structure is four stanzas of quaterines. Remember quaterine is a stanza with one two three four lines. The poem starts with pathetic fallacy and this establishes its gloomy mood. The sun is described as though chidden of God and this simile shows that God has forsaken this area. The speaker uses these words belonging to the semantic field of death to represent the death of a relationship. The repetition of the word eyes shows that the speaker feels the lover was really insincere and dishonest. They say words played between us to and fro which is euphemism for the arguments they used to have. In line 9 they describe the smile on the lover's face as dead and the enjomwon here emphasises how insincere the lover was. In line 10 the words alive and die are oxymorons illustrating the conflicting feelings the speaker has towards the lover. The simile and ellipsis here shows the ominous and sad feeling at the end of the relationship. Alliteration of L in lessons and love shows the poem's message which is that love is dishonest.