3. PERSONIFICATION-or the figure by which life and action are attributed to inanimate things; as,
Come gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,
And from the bosom of your dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
Life and action are attributed to Spring in these lines.
1. Poetry owes much of its effect and beauty to the figurative language with which it abounds. The imagination of the poet invests inanimate objects with life and intelligence, and represents them under all the varied aspects, changes and passions, which distinguish the higher order of beings.
2. In the pages which follow, the attention of the learner may be directed with great interest and profit to the Metaphors, Similes, Personifications and other figures which may occur,- an explanation of which he will find in Grammars and Rhetorics.
3. It will be a useful exercise to translate figurative expressions into commcn or literal style.
ADDRESS TO THE SHADE OF THOMSON.-[BURNS.]
Substitute words in their literal sense, for such as are usea figuratively.
While* virgin Spring, by Eden's flood,
Unfolds her tender mantle green,
Or pranks the sod in frolic mood
Or tunes Eolian strains between;
• What sentences does the connective adverb while connect?
While summer with her matron grace
Retreats to Dayburgh's cooling shade,
Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace
The progress of the spiky blade;
While Autumn, benefactor kind,
By Tweed erects his aged head,
And sees, with self approving mind,
Each creature on his bounty fed;
While maniac winter rages o'er
The hills whence classic Yarrow flows,
Rousing the turbid torrent's roar,
Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows;
So long, sweet Poet of the year,
Shall bloom that wreath thou well hast won,
While Scotia with exulting tear,
Proclaims that Thomson was her son.
DESCRIPTION OF A STORM.-[THOMSON.]
Point out the words in the following extract which are used in a figurative sense, and substitute for them words in their literal sense.
Behold, slow settling o'er the lurid grove
Unusual darkness broods, and growing gains
The full possession of the sky, surcharged
With wrathful vapor, from the secret beds,
Where sleep the mineral generations, drawn.
Thence nitre, sulphur, and the fiery spume.
Of fat bitumen, steaming on the day,
With various tinctured trains of latent flame,
Pollute the sky, and in yon baleful cloud,
A reddening gloom, a magazine of fate,
Farment; till, by the touch ethereal roused,
The dash of clouds, or irritating war
Of fighting winds, while all is calm below,
They furious spring. A boding silence reigns,
Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound
That from the mountain, previous to the storm,
Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood,
And shakes the forest-leaf without a breath.
Prone, to the lowest vale, the ærial tribes
Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce
Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze
The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens
Cast a deploring eye, by man forsook,
Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast,
Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave.
"Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement all.
When to the startled eye the sudden glance
Appears far south,1 eruptive through the cloud;
And following slower, in explosion vast
The Thunder raises his tremendous voice.
At first, heard solemn, o'er the verge of Heaven,
The tempest growls; but as it nearer comes,
And rolls its awful burden on the wind,
The lightnings flash a larger curve, and more
The noise astounds: till over head a sheet
Of livid flame discloses wide; then shuts,
And opens wider; shuts and opens still
Expansive, wrapping ether in a blaze.
Follows the loosened aggravated roar,
Enlarging, deepening, mingling; peal on peal
Crushed horrible, convulsing heaven and earth.
Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,
Or prone-descending rain. Wide rent, the clouds
Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame unquench'd,
The unconquerable lightning struggles through,
Rugged and fierce, or in red whirling balls,
And fires the mountains with redoubled rage.
Black from the stroke, above, the smouldering pine
Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretch'd below,
A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie:
Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look
They wore alive, and ruminating still
In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,
And ox half raised. Struck on the castled cliff,
The venerable tower and spiry fane
Resign their aged pride. The gloomy woods
Start at the flash, and from their deep recess,
Wide flaming out, their trembling inmates shake.
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year'
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness, and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;
F.cho the mountains round: the forest smiles';
And every sense, and every heart is joy.
Then comes Thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year:
And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks;'
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined,
And spreads a common feast for all that live.
In Winter awful thou! with clouds and storms
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled,
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, Thou bidst the world adore,
And humblest Nature with Thy northern blast.
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,
Yot so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;
Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole,
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever busy, wl ee's the silent spheres;
Works in the secre' deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion hat o'erspreads the Spring;
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.
Nature, attend! join, every living soul
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise
One general song! To Hum, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose spirit in your fresliness breathes:
O, talk of Him in solitary glooms!
Where, o'er the rock the scarcely waving pine
Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake th ́astonished world, lift high to heaven
Th'impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
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