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Question
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
I stand and look at them long and long.
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Solution
Repetition
Explanation:
In this line (which is a famous quote from Walt Whitman’s poem “Animals”), the word “long” is repeated twice (“long and long”).
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in words, usually the first sound. Sibilance is a special form of alliteration using the softer consonants that create hissing sounds, or sibilant sounds. These consonants and digraphs include s, sh, th, ch, z, f, x, and soft c.
Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents for a rhetorical or artistic effect of bringing out the full flavor of words. The sounds literally make the meaning in such words as “buzz,” “crash,” “whirr,” “clang” “hiss,” “purr,” “squeak,” etc.lt Is also used by poets to convey their subject to the reader. For example, In the last lines of Sir Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Come Down, O Maid’, m and n sounds produce an atmosphere of murmuring Insects:
… the moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Notice how D H Lawrence uses both these devices effectively in the following stanza.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
To what effect has the poet used these devices? How has it added to your understanding of the subject of the poem? You may record your understanding of snake characteristics under the following headings:
(a) Sound
(b) Movement
(c) Shape
The poem is entirely metaphorical. Pick out the comparison from the poem.
world - .............
Choose the correct Figure of speech that occurs in the following line. Justify your choice.
____________ but still we keep a bower quiet for us____________ .
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
No one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
In poetry, very often, there are lines in which the poet seems to talk directly to an absent person, an abstract idea, or a thing/object. Such a tactic/device used by the poet is the Figure of Speech ‘Apostrophe’.
For example,
Twinkle, twinkle little star ...
Death! Where is thy sting?
O, Caveman! I wish I could live with you.
Now, complete the following, creating an example of an Apostrophe of your own.
- O, Life! How ______
- Dear God, Please ______
- Books! You are ______
- Exams! I wish ______
- O, You beautiful sky ______
Pick out lines that contain:
Alliteration
Pick out lines that contain:
Hyperbole
Pick out line that contain the following Figures of Speech.
Repetition
Complete the following example of Hyperbole using words from the bracket below.
She wept____________of tears.
The Figure of Speech ‘ Apostrophe’ exists throughout the poem. Pick out the line where the poet directly addresses.
the sea-shore
- ____________
- ____________
