Tone 1: Mother of the Groom - Seamus Heaney

This is on page 851 of the Norton

The tone is a bit nostalgic in this poem and I sense the jealousy in the tone. The mother is talking about her son when he was younger and how she remembers how he was. In the first stanza, she reminisces the past when she was the only woman in his life. She had the "ring" with his boot, and her motherly love was the "soap" that surrounded him. Heaney mentions when the son broke away from the mother's soapy hold and connects it to the daughter in-law which shows the jealousy. This jealousy is also carried to the end when she is talking about the "soap [...] eas[ing] off", but the wedding ring his wife has lasting "forever". It shows the sorrow and jealousy of the mother because she compares it to the past when she was the only woman he had and there was no one in between mother and son. She wishes to return to that past it seems, because she wants the "soap" to not ease off of the groom.