Figurative Language

Task: Examine the 4 poetry extracts below and identify the figurative language techniques
being used in those lines.

Example:
“Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning –
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing more obscure than Browsing,
Save blacking.”

Identify two figurative language techniques used:

 Pun – Play on “Browning” (as in the name, and the colour)
 Personification – “Words shouting”

Extract 1
“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
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.”
- From “As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden

1. Quote and name three figurative language techniques used in this extract:
 Extract 2
“Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.”
- From “A list of Praises” by Anne Porter

2. Identify two figurative language techniques used in these lines:

Extract 3
“An emerald is green as grass,
A ruby red as blood;
A Sapphire shines as blue as heaven;
A flint lies in the mud.”
- From “Flint” by Christina Rossetti

3. Identify two techniques used:

Extract 4:
“Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.”
- From “Thistles” by Ted Hughes

4. Quote and name two figurative language techniques used: