apostrophe

John Donne comes up with the use of an apostrophe in his poem “Death Be Not Proud”:

“Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.”

The poet talks to death, an abstract idea, as if it were a person capable of comprehending his
feelings.

Similarly, John Donne once more uses apostrophe in his poem “The Sun Rising”:

“Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on
us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch,”

The poet addresses the sun in an informal and colloquial way as if it were a real human being.
He asks the Sun in a rude way why the Sun appeared and spoiled the good time he was
having with his beloved.

Example #5

James Joyce uses apostrophe in his novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”:

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to
forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

Being able to talk to something abstract like life is possible only in literature.

Example #6

Billy Collins, in his poem “To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years
from Now”, uses a conventional apostrophe starting with “O”:

“O stranger of the future!

O inconceivable being!
Whatever the shape of your house,
However you scoot from place to place,
No matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
Even the children, pushes her away.”

The speaker is talking to an imaginary character, the “stranger born in some distant country
hundreds of years from now”.
Example #7

Another apostrophe example is from the poem “Sire” written by W.S Merwin:

“Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot,

Little dry death, future,
Your indirections are as strange to me
As my own. I know so little that anything
You might tell me would be a revelation.”

alliteration

From Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

“Up the aisle, the moans and screams merged with the sickening smell of woolen black
clothes worn in summer weather and green leaves wilting over yellow flowers.”

Maya gives us a striking example of alliteration in the above extract with the letters “s” and
“w”. We notice that alliterative words are interrupted by other non-alliterative words among
them but the effect of alliteration remains the same. We immediately notice alliteration in the
words “screams”, “sickening smell”, “summer”, “weather” and wilting”.

hyperbole

From W.H Auden’s poem “As I Walked One Evening”,

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry

The use of hyperbole can be noticed in the above lines. The meeting of China and Africa, the
jumping of the river over the mountain, singing of salmon in the street, and the ocean being
folded and hung up to be dried are exaggerations not possible in real life.

simile

Robert Burns uses a simile to describe the beauty of his beloved.

“O my Luve’s like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.”

He says that his love is a fresh red rose that blossoms in the spring.

Example #5
Taken from the poem the Daffodils.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

that floats on high o’er vales and hills.”

The poet envisions himself as a free lone cloud that floats in a blue sky above valleys and the
mountains. By choosing this simile, Wordsworth describes his loneliness.

anaphora

William Blake in his poem “The Tyger” goes:

“What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”

The repetition of a series of questions which start with “what” creates a rhythm that creates
the effect of awe in readers.

antithesis

We find antithesis in John Donne’s poem “Community”:

“Good we must love, and must hate ill,

For ill is ill, and good good still;
But there are things indifferent,
Which we may neither hate, nor love,
But one, and then another prove,
As we shall find our fancy bent.”

Two contrasting words “love” and “hate” are combined in the above lines. It emphasizes that
we love good because it is always good and we hate bad because it is always bad. It is a
matter of choice to love or hate things which are neither good nor bad.