“O Time and Change!—with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left all that circle now,—
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the path their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor.”
The following lines are from Lord Byron’s Apostrophe to the Ocean:
“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”
Children enjoy searching for the different varieties of figures in the selections which they read. Not much instruction is needed, and it is not necessary that they should know the names of the different figures or acquire a great deal of technical knowledge. Yet in helping them to recognize figures it is best to proceed in a logical manner, showing, one at a time, what the principal figures are, upon what they are based, and what they add in vividness and beauty to the language. When one figure is understood, help the children to find many good examples in other selections, before taking up the second figure.
As a help to parents and children, we give an outline here for a study of the figures of speech in Shelley’s beautiful Ode to a Skylark (Volume VII, page 275).
1. Simile:
“From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire.”
“Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.”
“With music sweet as love.”