Chapter Theme: Tone

"But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating..." -"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

     With the chapter emphasis on tone, the importance with each poem was to find the speaker's and author's attitude towards the characters or institutions discussed. Because these poems are from a more educated and scholarly set of authors, the emotions did not explicitly appear through punctuation or direct description of events. Instead they were hinted at with metaphors and understatement. In poems like "To his Coy Mistress" and "The Apparition," I think it helps for the reader to put him/herself in the position of the speaker. I could much more easily figure out the attitude of the speaker towards his lover in each of these poems because I have experienced hints of these emotions before. Many of us are also well versed in normal human reaction to these situations. The author assumes we have an idea of how a normal person would react and uses the assumption to indicate the tone. I believe the tone is also established in many of the poems by including the reader in the plot. The authors use "we" and "us", even though they may be talking to a person not present, to make the interpretation more personal.