Figures of speech

a) Identify the Simile in the poem and explain.

b) Identify and explain an alliteration.

c) What is a metaphor? The poem has several metaphors. One has been done as an example. Find the others and explain them.

a) In the fifth and sixth lines, the speaker uses a simile to compare "tangled bine-stems" to "strings of broken lyres." Bine-stems are the stems of shrubs, and a lyre is a stringed musical instrument similar to a harp. Although "score" is a musical term, Hardy uses it to create an ominous visual image. While the speaker is outside contemplating a bleak landscape, the rest of the world is comfortably inside, warmed by "their household fires."

b) Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. There are several alliterations in the poem like ‘cloudy canopy’, blast-berruffled, growing gloom etc.

c) Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Hardy does this throughout the poem, describing twilight as the "weakening eye of day" and the landscape as "The Century's corpse."