The poems in the study are Neutral Tones (“NT”) and I Look Into My Glass (“Glass”). Both poems focus on loss of a different kind: "Glass" expresses Hardy's loss of youth; “NT” focuses on the death of Hardy's ex-wife and grieves the loss of their love. Although the losses are different, both poems use the vehicle of time to express Hardy's sadness, "Glass" through the passing of a day and "NT" through the passing of seasons. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In “Glass,” verbs cleverly highlight the passage of time and the pain of losing Hardy’s youth. In the first two lines, “look” and “view” are both in the present tense: Hardy literally looks at himself in the mirror and figuratively looks at himself, being both retrospective and introspective. However, seeing his aged skin, the tense quickly switches to the conditional. Hardy wishes his heart were as “thin” as his “bleak skin.” He wishes his heart were not so full of feeling and passion, that he had the moderate and impartial feelings of an old man; because then it wouldn't be bad if someone didn't return his feelings. In the final stanza he returns to the present, and the verbs he uses here highlight both his pain and his passivity. Time, personified, is the aggressor and is robbing him of his physical youth. The assonance in the last stanza emphasizes the aggressiveness of the tempo, as does the sudden acceleration of the rhythm in the last two lines and the use of active verbs ("shakes", "throbbings"). Hardy feels alone, unloved and slightly betrayed by the "hearts have grown cold to me". If his heart were not so full of passion, he could approach old age and death without anguish, calmly. He grieves that this is not the case and that although his body is old, he still experiences the feelings of a young man. He thinks that time has been spiteful by taking away his youthful appearance while retaining all his feelings. The poem is dominated by contrasting images of eve and noon, inner youth and external decay. He compares his body to the end of a day, while his emotions are at the meridian. Passion, which is at its peak, seems to shake the "fragile structure" of the body. Hardy projects the image of a person who passively suffers at the hands of others through phrases such as "hearts have grown cold to me" and "Time, to make me cry." In "NT" Hardy uses the seasons to convey time. Start by describing winter in the past tense. He describes it as dull, gray and lifeless. This is all a metaphor for the consequences of his relationship with his wife, describing the lack of feeling between them, where once there was joy and warmth. He speaks of the "hungry clod," inferring that there is no sustenance, warmth, or comfort. His use of words, such as "fallen" and "starved", highlights the death of the love that once existed between them. Hardy deliberately does not describe his wife in the first stanza, preferring, instead, to describe the desolation of the scene. This desolation is also emphasized by the lack of movement and energy seen throughout this verse. He then goes on to describe his wife's eyes as cold, disinterested, bored, and perhaps a little perplexed (as to whether she ever loved Hardy). They exchanged some social niceties with each other, but these words rang even more hollow due to the lack of warmth, love, and intimacy that once existed between them. Hardy then goes on to describe his wife's smile as dead, but that dead smile is gone too, to be replaced by a bitter smile. Hardy is obsessed with the image of the.