LITERARY DEVICES

The Brook

Personification:
Personification is the poetic practice of attributing human qualities, character or personality to inanimate or non-
human beings such that they appear to be living human beings. In the poem "The Brook", the brook has been
personified.

Alliteration:
Alliteration is "the repetition of usually consonant sounds occurring recurrently at the beginning of a word or of
a stressed syllable within a word."
Examples:
 By many a field and fallow,
 And many a fairy foreland set
 With willow-weed and mallow
 I come from haunts of coot and hern

Onomatopoeia:
Onomatopoeia (sometimes called echoism) is applied to a word, or a combination of words, whose sound seems
to resemble the sound it describes. chatter, babble, murmur, bicker, trebles etc. are onomatopoeic words.
Example:
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I babble on the pebbles.

Repetition:
Poets often repeat single words or phrases, lines, and sometimes, even whole stanzas at intervals to create a
musical effect; to emphasize a point; to draw the readers' attention or to lend unity to a piece.
Example:
I chatter, chatter, as I flow

Refrain:
For men may come and men may go,
but I go on forever
This refrain gives a musical effect to the poem and brings home the idea of the transitory nature of human life
as compared to of a brook.

Anaphora
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses
Imagery:
Imagery stands for figurative illustrations and mental pictures that are created in the mind of a reader through
the usage of a simile, a metaphor, a symbol and the skilful use of words. Imagery concretizes an abstract
thought and lends vividity to the poem.
Example:
 'Thirty hills', 'twenty thorpes', 'hundred bridges' highlight the great distance covered by the brook.
 A 'sailing blossom', 'a lusty trout', 'a grayling', 'the skimming swallows' symbolize the brook's ability to
support life.
 'Shingly bars', 'brambly wildernesses', 'stony ways' create an image of the obstacles and impediments
thrown up by life.
 'Silvery water-breaks', 'netted sunbeams' and 'eddying bays' bring out the brook's thrill and excitement.
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