EXERCISES
Explain why the following quotations are examples of personifications:—
1. The day is done; and slowly from the scene The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts And puts them back into his golden quiver.
—Longfellow.
2. Time is a cunning workman and no man can detect his joints.
—Charles Pierce Burton.
3. The sun is couched, the seafowl gone to rest, And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest.
—Wordsworth.
4. See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother.
—Shelley.
+91. Apostrophe.+—Apostrophe is like personification, but has an additional characteristic. When we directly address inanimate objects or the absent as if they were present, we call the figure of speech thus formed apostrophe.
The following are examples of apostrophe:—
1. Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
—Tennyson.
2. Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.
—Elizabeth Akers Allen.
+92. Metonymy.+—Metonymy consists in substituting one object for another, the two being so closely associated that the mention of one suggests the other.
1. The pupils are reading George Eliot. 2. Each hamlet heard the call. 3. Strike for your altars and your fires. 4. Gray hairs should be respected.
+93. Synecdoche.+—Synecdoche consists in substituting a part of anything for the whole or a whole for the part.
1. A babe, two summers old.
2. Give us this day our daily bread.
3. Ring out the thousand years of woe,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
4. Fifty mast are on the ocean.
+94. Other Figures of Speech.+—Sometimes, especially in older rhetorics, the following so-called figures of speech are added to the list already given: irony, hyperbole, antithesis, climax, and interrogation. The two former pertain rather to style, in fact, are qualities of style, while the last two might properly be placed along with kinds of sentences or paragraph development. Since these so-called figures are not all mentioned elsewhere in this text, a brief explanation and example of each will be given here.
1. Irony consists in saying just the opposite of the intended meaning, but in such a way that it emphasizes that meaning.
What has the gray-haired prisoner done?
Has murder stained his hands with gore?
Not so; his crime is a fouler one—
God made the old man poor.
—Whittier.
2. Hyperbole is an exaggerated expression used to increase the effectiveness of a statement.
He was a man of boundless knowledge.
3. Antithesis consists merely of contrasted statements. This contrast may be found in a single sentence or it may be extended through an entire paragraph.
Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.
—Shakespeare.
4. Climax consists of an ascendant arrangement of words or ideas.
I came, I saw, I conquered.
5. When a question is asked, not for the purpose of obtaining information but in order to make speech more effective, it is called the figure of interrogation. An affirmative question denies and a negative question affirms.
1. Am I my brother's keeper? 2. Am I not free?