ABSTRACT
Tone is the emotional fingerprint of a poem. Because it is everywhere in the poem, we cannot say that one aspect or another defines the tone. Tone is the result of all the artistic choices about words, sounds, rhythm, syntax, and line, plus the emotional point of view of the poem. That word 'tone' was usually not a word heard often. Life went by we played, pouted, exclaimed, ate, babbled and did not think much about the tone of our experiences. The lyric tone is unfettered feeling, the soul's outpouring, be it of desire or ardor or regret. Poems in which one feeling dominates tend to be poems with definite tasks. They mourn or celebrate or try to cajole or console. A poet from the nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold, and a poet from the twentieth, Sylvia Plath, may stand as examples of the fate of the lyric.
