Neutral Tones & Winter Swans comparison essay

Hi, I have a poetry comparison exam coming up and I practiced writing one with the two poems Neutral Tones and Winter Swans. I was wondering how I could improve my writing to get an overall higher grade and what I did good in my essay. Please be honest and be harsh if you have to! Thank you! The question and essay below:

Compare how poets present romantic feelings in ‘Winter Swans’ and in one other poem
from ‘Love and relationships’.

In ‘Winter Swans’ and ‘Neutral Tones’, both poets express romantic feelings through pathetic fallacy and the imagery of nature. Sheers’ poem ends with a hopeful and seemingly resolved tone, whereas Hardy ends his poem using cyclical structure to create a sense of entrapment and suffering.

The overall tone of ‘Winter Swans’ is distance, rekindling and resolution. The tone is also calm as the couple begin to repair the distance between them. However, in ‘Neutral Tones’ the tone is more pessimistic and how the speaker expresses their attitude towards love.

‘Winter Swans’ opens with the two main characters standing together outside, getting a “break” from “days of rain”. The writer uses pathetic fallacy to present the idea of the relationship fading or even dying out. The ground “gulped for breath” shows struggle of the environment and reflects upon the couples relationship struggles. The use of personification implies that their relationship could be dying. 3 line stanzas have been used at the beginning of the poem to show the distance between the couple and how they’re emotionally unrested. Disjointed line lengths also enforce the idea of the couple not being in agreement and fractured. The use of ½ rhyme, implies that even though the the couple are currently distanced, they still have a deep connection. In ‘Neutral Tones’, the writer also uses the imagery of nature to display the coldness between the two characters. “That winter day” implies that the relationship has quickly grown unfriendly. The use of pathetic fallacy sets a foreboding tone for the rest of the poem and further enforces the idea of suffering for the narrator. “Winter” further implies that the relationship between the two is coming to an end and the love cycle has finished. Throughout the entirety of the poem, Hardy uses colours to relate to the feelings of the relationship and how they’ve disappeared over time. “White…ash…greyish” implies that the relationship has lost all its life and colours, resulting in a neutral colour palette. This further links to the title and the couple's neutrality. ‘Neutral Tones’ uses an ABBA rhyme scheme, this could imply the coldness and distance between the two. Both poems represent hardship through the use of pathetic fallacy and the imagery of nature.

Nearing the end of ‘Winter Swans’, the couple begin to reconcile and reconnect their previous feelings. “Like a pair of wings settling after flight” is used to represent that after all the commotion and struggles, the relationship has begun to heal and they have soon became one. The use of the simile is to show that the struggle has ended and the relationship is beginning to revive. “Wings” also relates back to the title and the running theme of swans throughout the poem. “Flight” could suggest that the couple were once previously unrested, but have now calmed down and have returned to their former selves. The structure of the poem, changing from triplets to couplets, shows that there is no longer distance and they’ve returned to what they once were: a couple. The use of caesura also predicts the permanence of the relationship. It also enforces the idea of togetherness and the improved relationship status. However, the end of ‘Neutral Tones’ is the complete opposite resulting in the same outcome as the beginning of the poem. The speaker says “the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing”. This juxtaposes with itself, comparing something that is meant to be warm, with something that relates with death. The use of semantic field of death throughout the poem, connotates that the speaker has no positive attitude to fixing the relationship, but is rather pessimistic and willing to accept the end. The last line “a pond edged with greyish leaves” shows a cyclical structure and the characters continued suffering. It also demonstrates, that the speaker is willing to do nothing to change the situation. The last stanza of the poem shifts focus from memory to the lesson that the speaker has learnt. Both poems show outcomes from relationships; one being a positive end, and the other being a continuing struggle.