Question

Which of the given options contains the figure of speech that appears in the following lines from Longfellow’s poem, ‘Haunted Houses’?

‘The spirit-world around this world of sense 
Floats like an atmosphere, ...’

Options

• ‘Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.’

• ‘When Frost was spectre-gray’

• ‘An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes’

• ‘She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;’

Answer 1

‘She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;’

Explanation:

The lines from Longfellow’s poem, “The spirit-world around this world of sense/Floats like an atmosphere,” contain a simile. A simile is a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two unlike things using “like” or “as.” Here, the spirit-world is compared to an atmosphere through the use of the word “like.”