Poem With An Extended Metaphor

A metaphor is a comparing between ii, unlike things that do not use "like" or "as." They feature throughout the poems on this listing. From authors like Philip Larkin to Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, all poets have used metaphors in 1 way or some other. On this list, readers tin discover a few of the all-time poems always written that utilize metaphors.

Wires by Philip Larkin

This memorable poem uses an extended metaphor. This means that the metaphor lasts for more than i line. In this example, it extends throughout the unabridged poem. Information technology compares human beings to young steer and their learned behavior. Here are a few of Larkin's lines:

Leads them to corrigendum up against the wires

Whose musculus-shredding violence gives no quarter.

Young steers go old cattle from that day,

Electric limits to their widest senses.

The speaker describes the learned behavior of cattle who spend their days on a wide prairie surrounded by an electric fence. In Larkin's imagined pasture, the old cows are well aware of the importance of staying away from the boundaries of the field. But the young steer are less experienced and have withal to come to grips with the predetermined boundaries of their world. They "blunder confronting the wires," still unaware of the boundaries of their globe.

"Hope" is the matter with feathers— by Emily Dickinson

In this famous poem, Dickinson compares a bird to "promise." The poem is lighter than the majority of her poesy and focuses on the personification of promise. Hope is, the speaker says, a bird that perches inside her soul and sings. The bird asks for nothing. It is at peace, and is, therefore, able to impart the same hope and peace to the speaker. Here are a few lines:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

She tin can depend on it and take pleasure from it. The text is besides a prime example of the way that Dickinson used nature as a metaphor for the virtually complicated of human emotions.

The Flea by John Donne

This poem is i of John Donne's nigh famous and commonly studied. Information technology uses a conceit or an extended metaphor that is particularly surprising and unexpected. This is something that Donne was very well-known for. In this poem, the speaker describes being bitten by a flea that also bit his lover. Consider these lines:

Mark but this flea, and marking in this,

How little that which 1000 deniest me is;

It sucked me offset, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our ii bloods mingled be;

Thou know'st that this cannot exist said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Their bodies are mixing inside the body of the flea, therefore inspiring the speaker to inquire his lover to sleep with him. But, she kills the flea. Rather than beingness deterred, the speaker uses this as proof that at that place'due south no reason they shouldn't slumber together. Their essences mingled successfully inside the creature, so they will live in real life as well.

The Route Not Taken by Robert Frost

'The Road Non Taken' is an incredibly pop poem. In it, the speaker describes two paths that are set out before the speaker, and it is up to him to choose which one to travel down. These two paths conspicuously represent broader and more important choices in life. Interesting, Frost described how this poem was written as a joke and a style of teasing his friend and beau poet, Edward Thomas. Consider these lines:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And exist 1 traveler, long I stood

And looked downwardly one every bit far as I could

To where information technology bent in the undergrowth;

One of the ii paths appears to be less worn than the other, but later on closer inspection, the reader should realize they are both the same. At the time, he thought he might go back and try the tooth path, but he realized that this is never going to happen.

I Wandered Lonely equally a Cloud past William Wordsworth

This well-loved poem is at the eye of Romanticism. This poem describes the spontaneous emotions of the poet's middle and how it is sparked by the sprightly trip the light fantastic of daffodils. He writes the following lines:

I wandered lone as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, below the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Here, he describes the daffodils as "dancing," a wonderful example of personification. The poet also uses a simile, comparison himself to a "cloud" that floats "on high o'er vales and hills." He goes on, comparison the stars to dancers using the following metaphor: "Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

Shall I compare thee to a summer's solar day? past William Shakespeare

The speaker starts off this verse form with the question, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" He answers this himself, saying that his lover, the Off-white Youth, is far more beautiful. He is "more lovely and more temperate." Here are a few more lines:

Rough winds practice shake the darling buds of May,

And summer'due south lease hath all besides brusk a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And frequently is his gold complexion dimm'd;

The speaker compares the listener to an "eternal summer" that "shall not fade."

O Captain! My Helm! by Walt Whitman

This pop poem uses a metaphor to compare the recently deceased President Abraham Lincoln to a send captain. The poet wrote:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The transport has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow optics the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

Without specifically using his name, the poet makes it articulate that he's mourning the loss of his "captain," the President, and is trying to celebrate his life.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

Forth with 'The Flea,' this is one of the all-time examples of Donne'south use of conceits. In the second part of the poem, the speaker creates a beautiful metaphor that compares his dearest and lover to the hands of a compass. Every bit ane stays steady on the paper (the woman and intended listener of the poem), the other strays, always to be brought dorsum home safely. Hither are a few lines:

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

Information technology leans and hearkens later information technology,

And grows erect, equally that comes home.

An Apple Gathering by Christina Rossetti

In this interesting Rossetti poem, the poet uses the metaphor of an apple picking to describe a woman losing her virginity and worth in the poet's gimmicky gild. The woman picks her apples too early and suddenly, she's lost her place. Here are a few lines:

I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree

And wore them all that evening in my hair:

Then in due season when I went to run across

I found no apples there.

The Colossus by Sylvia Plath

This powerful verse form uses a metaphor to depict Plath's relationship with her begetter. She wrote:

I shall never go you put together entirely,

Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.

Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles

Go on from your groovy lips.

It's worse than a barnyard.

She has a troubling human relationship, compared to a caretaker trying to put a statue back tougher, with her begetter. She tends to the statue, sometimes expressing irritation or exasperation with it and other times relishing in its presence.

FAQs

What are poetic metaphors?

They are comparisons between two, unlike things that do not use "like" or "as." These comparisons are sometimes obvious and other times far more surprising and original, such as in the case of John Donne'southward poetry.

What is an extended metaphor in a poem?

An extended metaphor is a metaphor that lasts more than a few lines. It tin run throughout an entire verse form, stanza, or a series of stanzas.