The tone could best be described as somber resignation. The speaker realizes that human beings are all subject, in some varying degree, to the historical epoch they emerge on the scene of and will ply their character, will, desire, and passion using the tools available to one of their dispensation and station in life. However, the speaker’s tone is more resigned to the realization that there are archetypes or “sorts of folk” which are present in all eras, the Helen Type of a universal nature–yet, in the motley mechanization of the present day, the speaker comments and privately despairs that men’s resolve, courage an desire has weakened to the point another Helen could not incite a civilizational conflict were she to try her whole life at the endeavor.

The speaker realizes that human beings are all subject, in some varying degree, to the historical epoch they emerge on the scene of and will ply their character, will, desire, and passion using the tools available to one of their dispensation and station in life. Thus, the misery is post romantic (post relationship) but more related to the despair of man in the face of time’s vast sad wastes, then any given political telos.

The speaker’s tone is more resigned to the realization that there are archetypes or “sorts of folk” which are present in all eras, the Helen Type of a universal nature–yet, in the motley mechanization of the present day, the speaker comments and privately despairs that men’s resolve, courage an desire has weakened to the point another Helen could not incite a civilizational conflict were she to try her whole life at the endeavor.