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Can you provide an example of figurative meaning in a poem?
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Figurative language in poetry uses literary devices to convey deeper meanings beyond the literal. For example, in "Sonnet 18," Shakespeare uses a metaphor comparing a lover to summer. Similarly, Wordsworth's "Daffodils" uses a simile and personification, as in "I wandered lonely as a cloud" and daffodils "dancing in the breeze." In Thomas Campion's "There Is a Garden in Her Face," the garden metaphorically represents a woman's beauty and virginity, using "cherry" to symbolize virginity.
Before giving a specific example, let's have a look at what figurative as opposed to literal means. The literal meaning of poetry or language in general indicates that the words used mean exactly what they appear to mean according to their conventional definitions. Figurative language, however, goes beyond literal meanings to convey added insight to the reader.
Figurative language employs a range of literary devices to give added dimension to the words a writer uses to convey thoughts in poetry. For instance, metaphors compare two things that are otherwise unrelated. In "Sonnet 18," William Shakespeare compares the lover for whom the poem is written to the loveliness of the season of summer.
Similes also use comparison, but specifically with the words "like" or "as." In "Daffodils," William Wordsworth compares himself to a cloud in the sky when he says, "I wandered lonely as a cloud."
Personifications give human attributes to...
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animals or ideas. The same poem, "Daffodils" by Wordsworth, personifies "a host of golden daffodils" by describing them as "dancing in the breeze."
Hyperboles emphasize ideas by exaggerating them. W. H. Auden uses hyperbole in describing how much the narrator loves the "dear" object of the poem in "As I Walked Out One Evening." He writes that he will love his dear one "till China and Africa meet," "the river jumps over the mountain," "the salmon sing in the street," and "the ocean is folded and hung up to dry."
For an entire poem that uses figurative language, consider "She Sweeps With Many-Colored Brooms" by Emily Dickinson. The first stanza says:
She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!
Literally, it sounds as if Dickinson is writing about a housewife doing her chores, but the entire poem is actually a figurative description of a sunset.
Much Renaissance love poetry uses extended metaphors or other figures of speech as a means of talking about love or sexuality. One charming example is Thomas Campion’s song “There Is a Garden in Her Face,” in which the beauties of the narrator's beloved are compared to a beautiful garden, with her skin being compared to lilies, as pale skin was considered especially beautiful in that period, and her lips to roses. The final two lines of the stanza are:
There cherries grow which none may buy,
Till "Cherry ripe" themselves do cry.
On a literal level, we get a sense of the woman making some sort of choice. On the figurative level, the term "cherry" is slang for virginity and ripening suggests sexual maturity. Thus what is being said on the figurative level has nothing to do with a woman growing and selling fruit, but rather is saying that the woman herself decides when to give away her virginity.