3. Life is a leaf of paper white,
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two, and then comes night.
--Lowell.
+90. Personification.+--Personification is a special form of the metaphor
in which life is attributed to inanimate objects or the characteristics of
persons are attributed to objects, animals, or even to abstract ideas.
EXERCISES
Explain why the following quotations are examples of personifications:--
1. The day is done; and slowly from the scene
The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts
And puts them back into his golden quiver.
--Longfellow.
2. Time is a cunning workman and no man can detect his joints.
--Charles Pierce Burton.
3. The sun is couched, the seafowl gone to rest,
And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest.
--Wordsworth.
4. See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother.
--Shelley.
+91. Apostrophe.+--Apostrophe is like personification, but has an
additional characteristic. When we directly address inanimate objects or
the absent as if they were present, we call the figure of speech thus
formed apostrophe.
The following are examples of apostrophe:--
1. Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
--Tennyson.
2. Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.
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