The best description of the tone of the poem according to the author's word choice is; the tone is sorrowful because ""the fragile old man"" cannot afford to pay for his food.
The poet's attitude toward the poem's speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader is often described as a “mood” or tone that pervades the experience of reading the poem, it is created by the poem's vocabulary, metrical regularity or irregularity, syntax and the use of figurative language.
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