Reluctance

[timwangnyc]

I agree with what Tony mentioned in the class that the tone of this poem is depressed, and I think the speaker might have lost something that he loves. In the third stanza, it says that" The last lone aster is gone"(15). The word "gone" is a proof which shows that the speaker must have lost something, and by saying "the last" it shows the speaker's emotion of missing the thing that he has lost.The speaker's"heart is still aching to seek"(17). Aching means painful, the speaker is looking for the thing that he lost, and he feels distressed because he lost the thing that he loves otherwise he wouldn't be sad.  

[AnAn Yu]

There was another thing that i think is related to the narrator's feeling.

This poem mentioned a lot about the leaves and flowers are gone and one line that said "over the crust snow" (11). Both of them shows the season of this poem which is the end of fall and the beginning of the winter.

Winter always means to something that is old or things almost dead. If we see the last two lines "and bow accept the end/of a love or a season" which also means end, we can see something (maybe heart) of narrator is dead or nearly dead. This shows the tone of this poem is negative.