Sunday, May 31, 2009

what is Figures of speech in John Donne's "Song: Sweetest Love"

John Donne
uses apostrophe, or direct address, by talking to his beloved in
this poem: he speaks directly to her to reassure her that he will not be gone long on his
journey. He uses enjambment, or continuing a thought from one line
to the next without a stop when he writes:

Nor in hope
the world can show
A fitter love for me

In the second stanza the speaker uses comparison to liken
himself to the sun. He says his journey will be faster than the sun's daily journey across the
earth, and that just like the faithful sun, he will return the next day. He also uses
, which is to give human traits to an inanimate object or animal.
Here, he speaks of the sun as a "he," and says that it lacks the speaker's sense and
desire, as if it should have sense and desire.

When the speaker says he will
takes more "wings" on his journey than the sun, he doesn't mean he will literally take
wings, but that he will travel faster, like a bird with powerful wings. He is using a
to liken his travel to flying.

Donne employs
, orwords in close proximity starting with the same consonant, when
he writes:

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall ...

The alliterative 'f's' create a sense of rhythm.

Donne uses , or beginning lines of verse with the same word or words
when he writes
And we join to'it our
strength,
And we teach it art and length

The speaker uses figures of speech when he tells his beloved
that:
When thou
sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth
decay.
When his
beloved sighs in unhappiness she is not literally blowing his soul way. What he means is she is
giving him emotional pain by sighing. Likewise, when she weeps, his blood doesn't literally
decay. He uses that image to convey that he feels terrible inside when she cries at the thought
of their separation.


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