Figurative Language Devices

Read the following poem by George Herbert (published 1633) carefully before choosing your answer:

1 When God at first made man,
2 Having a glass of blessings standing by,
3 "Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can.
4 Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
5 Contract into a span."
6 So strength first made a way;
7 Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
8 When almost all was out, God made a stay,
9 Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
10 Rest in the bottom lay.
11 "For if I should," said he,
12 "Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
13 He would adore my gifts instead of me,
14 And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
15 So both should losers be."

In lines 11–15, the metaphorical characterization of rest as "this jewel" (line 12) primarily serves to achieve which of the following effects?

Read the following poem by Christina Rossetti (published 1861) carefully before choosing your answer:

A Birthday

1 My heart is like a singing bird
2 Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
3 My heart is like an apple-tree
4 Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
5 My heart is like a rainbow shell
6 That paddles in a halcyon sea;
7 My love is come to me,
8 And my heart is gladder than all these.
9 Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
10 Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
11 And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
12 Work it in gold and silver grapes,
13 In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
14 Because the birthday of my life
15 Is come, my love is come to me.

In the first stanza, how does the speaker’s series of similes in lines 1–6 function to convey their emotional state?

Read the following lines from John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) carefully before choosing your answer:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

In these lines, the speaker addresses the urn using a series of metaphors ("bride of quietness," "foster-child of silence," "Sylvan historian"). Which of the following best describes how these figurative devices function to establish the speaker's relationship with the urn?

Read the following lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" (1818) carefully:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

In line 8, the speaker uses synecdoche ("The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed") primarily to achieve which of the following effects?

Read the following lines from John Donne’s poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (written c. 1611) carefully before choosing your answer:

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it. (line 4)

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. (line 8)

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat. (line 12)

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do. (line 16)

In lines 9–12, which of the following best describes how the speaker uses figurative language to characterize the separation of the lovers?

Read the following lines from William Blake's poem "The Tyger" (1794) carefully:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In the third line of the excerpt, the synecdoche "hand or eye" functions primarily to do which of the following?

Read the following passage from John Donne's "Holy Sonnet 14" (published 1633) carefully before choosing your answer.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

In the context of the passage, how does the personification of Reason as God's "viceroy" function to develop the speaker's internal conflict?

Read the following passage from William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (1807) carefully before choosing your answer:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. (6)

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. (12)

In lines 11-12 ("Ten thousand... dance"), how do the figurative devices of hyperbole and personification primarily function to develop the speaker's perspective?

Read the following passage from William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 73" (published in 1609) carefully before choosing your answer.

(1) That time of year thou mayst in me behold
(2) When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
(3) Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
(4) Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
(5) In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
(6) As after sunset fadeth in the west,
(7) Which by and by black night doth take away,
(8) Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
(9) In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
(10) That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
(11) As the death-bed whereon it must expire
(12) Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
(13) This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
(14) To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In the third quatrain (lines 9–12), the speaker compares his state to a dying fire that is "Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by." How does this figurative language contribute to the development of the speaker's reflection on aging?

Read the following lines from Matthew Arnold’s poem "Dover Beach" (1867) carefully:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

In the passage, how does the metaphor of "The Sea of Faith" function to develop the speaker's perspective on the modern world?

Read the following lines from Anne Bradstreet's poem "The Author to Her Book" (1678) carefully:

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags to wander, where errors were not lessened,
And thy blemishes amended,
At least not in my sight, for I was ashamed
Of thy deformed looks when first I named.

Which of the following best describes how the conceit functions in these lines?

Read the following poem by William Shakespeare (1609) carefully:

1 That time of year thou mayst in me behold
2 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
3 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
4 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
5 In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
6 As after sunset fadeth in the west,
7 Which by and by black night doth take away,
8 Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
9 In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
10 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
11 As the death-bed whereon it must expire
12 Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
13 This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
14 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

In the context of the poem’s progression, how does the metaphor of the fading fire in lines 9-12 function differently from the metaphors of autumn (lines 1-4) and twilight (lines 5-8)?

Read the following lines from James Shirley’s poem "Death the Leveller" (published in 1659) carefully before choosing your answer:

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade;

In lines 5–8, the speaker's use of metonymy ("Sceptre and Crown" and "scythe and spade") primarily functions to do which of the following?

Read the following lines from Claude McKay's sonnet "America" (1921) carefully before choosing your answer:

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,

In these lines, how does the personification of America primarily function to develop the speaker's perspective?

Read the following lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind" (1820) carefully:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

In the passage, the speaker’s use of apostrophe in directly addressing the wind primarily functions to do which of the following?

In Emily Dickinson's poem "I like to see it lap the Miles" (written c. 1862), the speaker describes the movement of a train:

I like to see it lap the Miles –
And lick the Valleys up –
And stop to feed itself at Tanks –
And then – prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains –
And supercilious peer
In Shacks – along the Road –

Which of the following best describes how the figurative comparison of the train to a living creature functions in these lines?

Read the following poem by William Wordsworth (published 1807) carefully before choosing your answer:

London, 1802

1 Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
2 England hath need of thee: she is a fen
3 Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
4 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
5 Have forfeited their ancient English dower
6 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
7 Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
8 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
9 Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
10 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
11 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
12 So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
13 In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
14 The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

In lines 3-4, the speaker uses metonymy ("altar, sword, and pen, / Fireside") primarily to do which of the following?