TONE

THE LANGUAGE OF
EMOTION

D E F I N I T I O N O F TON E

Tone defined as a writers

or speakers attitude
toward the subject, the
audience or toward herself
or himself. ( wikipedia)

Tone is created by
word choice, especially
word connotations,
often an authors tone
is describe by
adjective such as :
cynical, depressed,
sympathetic, cheerful,
outraged, positive,
angry, sarcastic,
prayerful, ironic,
solemn, vindictive,
intense, excited

Tone can be playful,

humorous, regretful
anything and it can
change as the poem
goes along.

MORNFUL TONE
Tone in poetry runs the gamut of
human attitudes and emotions. The
poet may set a mournful tone, as Walt
Whitman does in the opening lines of
his greal elegy on the death of
President Lincoln :

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,

And the great star early drooped in the westrn
sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever
returning spring.

RELIGIOUS AWE
Henry Vaughan The World
I saw the eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres.
Like a vast shadow moved in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

H E N RY VA U G H A N T H E W O R L D

Angels, where were you when

my best friend did herself in?
Were you lunching beside us
that final noon, did you catch
some nuance that went past my ear?
Did you ease my father out
of his cardiac arrest that wet
fall day I sat at the high crib bed
holding his hand? And when
my black-eyed Susan-child ran
off with her European lover
and has been ever since an unbelonger,
were you whirligiging over
the suitcases

IRREVERENT
TONE

Maxine
Kumins
Address to
the Angel

IRONIC TONE
Droll, vegetarian, the water rat
Swas down a reed and swims from his limber grove,
While the student scroll or sit,
Hands laced, in a moony indolenceo of love
Black growned, but unaware
How in such mild air
The owl shall stoop from his turret,o the rat cry out

Much of the best-known modern

poetry has an ironic tone.
Whenever something seems too
beautiful to be true, weseem
prepared for the ironic
counterpoint. We seem ready for
the revenge of reality on rosy
projections.
The following concluding stanza
from a poem by Silvia Plath is
well attuned to the modern
temper.

Example Shakespeares sonnets use the hightened, exalted language of idealized lov
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Sonnet 18
Shall i compare thee of summers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
And summers lease hath all too short a date:o
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often in his gold gold complextion dimmed;
And every fairo from fair something declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimmed
But thy eternal summer shal not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst,o
Nor shall death brag thou wanders in his shade,
When in eternal lineo to time thou growst
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

THE USES OF IRONY

THE USES OF
PARADOX