"My Mistress' eyes" William Shakespeare

"I have seen roses damasked, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks" (Lines 5-6)

       William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known men on earth, so this poem is preceded by an air of respectability. "My Mistress' eyes" has a tone of imperfect beauty and true love. The speaker negates his love's physical attributes by saying that she is not as perfect as the goddesses described in most love poems. Nor is she as beautiful as the women most poems spend their time documenting. However, the tone is not negative. It is so raw and true that it completely embodies the imperfections that make a person beautiful to his or her partner. The speaker admits that she is not the most ravishing woman in all the earth, "coral is far more red than her lips' red," and "music hath a far more pleasing sound" than her voice. However, all of this is irrelevant in the speaker's opinion. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this poem only solidifies that. The tone of true love is impossible to ignore.

"Much Madness is divinest Sense" - Tone

"To a discerning Eye - / Much Sense - the starkest Madness - " (Lines 2-3)

       There is a fine line between madness and genius. Some of the greatest minds of our history were considered to be relatively mad. However, their genius won out because they are famous for their brains rather than notorious for their evil madman-like qualities simply because they were smart enough not to be evil madmen.

     This poem focuses on the differentiation between sanity and insanity, and the tone is one of resigned understanding of the views society has on insanity. The speaker also addresses the pressures associated with conforming to society as opposed to having radical views. She is resigned to the fact that no one can win when it comes to fitting into society. When she says, "Assent - and you are sane - / Demur - you're straightaway dangerous," the speaker is trying to demonstrate how judgmental society is, how black and white decisions are when viewed by a whole community. Madness produces sense, and great sense is only madness.

The Convergence of the Twain - Tone (Question 8)

"And as the smart ship grew / In stature, grace, and hue, / In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too." (lines 22-24)

       This line most effectively captures the tone of the poem because it embodies the sense of awe and wonder that saturates the the first two lines of most of the stanzas. It is also simultaneously addressing the premonition that is emanating from the line "The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything" through the end of the poem. "The Convergence of the Twain" is formatted so that each stanza includes a bit of awe and a bit of pretense about the future. In the line I quoted above, the ship is praised as being one of stellar quality and unmatched power with words such as "smart" and "stature, grace, and hue." However, these middle three words also address the iceberg. It is just as strong and stealthy, but it wins out in the end. The juxtaposition of these two brute forces is not only a literary triumph, but it is also the transitional point in the poem when Hardy moves away from a tone of awe into one of foreboding premonition.