Neutral Tones

“She, to Him IV” by Thomas Hardy (1866)

This is another poem written in 1866 that appears collected in Wessex Poems (1898). The poem is part of the sonnet series that biographers like Michael Millgate and Paula Byrne generally believe are written from the imagined point of view of Eliza Bright Nicholls after her relationship with Hardy ended. In these sonnets, the woman in love has been abandoned by her lover. “She, to Him IV” may work in tandem with “Neutral Tones,” as it deals with the speaker exploring her feelings regarding a woman close to her winning the “love of thee” (Line 3). Biographers think that in 1866, Hardy began a flirtation with Eliza’s younger sister, Jane, which was the impetus for Eliza and Hardy’s broken engagement. If the poems are indeed autobiographical, Hardy imagines Eliza addressing him as the “Lost One” (Line 13) and saying that “[her] being is but [his] own” (Line 7). If “Neutral Tones” is about Eliza, then the betrayal may have occurred in the relationship discussed in the first stanza of “She, to Him IV”: “I can […] pray her dead, / for giving love” (Lines 2-3).

“A Broken Appointment” by Thomas Hardy (1901)