Figurative Language in Poetry

You fit into meYou Fit Into Me

You fit into melike a hook into an eye

a fish hookan open eye

Margaret Atwood

A Red, Red RoseO My Luve's like a red, red rose,That's newly sprung in June;O My Luve's like the melodieThat's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,So deep in luve am I;And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a' the seas gang dry, my dearWhile the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,And fare thee weel, awhile!And I will come again, my luveTho' it ware ten thousand mile!

Robert Burns

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Metaphors I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Sylvia Plath

Tower of Song Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day Oh in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet But I hear him coughing all night long A hundred floors above me In the Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen

Pride One man come in the name of

loveOne man come and goOne man come here to justifyOne man to overthrowIn the name of love.

One man caught on a barbed wire fenceOne man he resistsOne man washed on an empty beachOne man betrayed with a kiss

In the name of love!

What more in the name of love?

Early morning, April 4Shot rings out in the Memphis skyFree at last, they took your life.

They could not take your pride.

Bono

I know why the Caged Bird Sings The free bird leaps

on the back of the winand floats downstreamtill the current endsand dips his wingsin the orange sun raysand dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalksdown his narrow cagecan seldom see throughhis bars of ragehis wings are clipped andhis feet are tiedso he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird singswith fearful trillof the things unknownbut longed for stilland is tune is heardon the distant hill for the caged birdsings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze an the trade winds soft through the sighing treesand the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird singswith a fearful trillof things unknownbut longed for stilland his tune is heardon the distant hillfor the caged birdsings of freedom.

Maya Angelou

Do Not Go Gentle into that good night Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas

The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claimBecause it was grassy and wanted wear,Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to wayI doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

The Train I like to see it lap the miles,

And lick the valleys up,And stop to feed itself at tanks;And then, prodigious, stepAround a pile of mountains,And, supercilious, peerIn shanties by the sides of roads;And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while

In horrid, hooting stanza;Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;Then, punctual as a start its own,Stop-docile and omnipotent-A stable door.

Emily Dickinson

Root Cellar Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a

ditch,Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,Shoots dangled and drooped,Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.And what a congress of stinks!Roots ripe as old bait,Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.Theodore Roethke