4. Major Figures of Speech: of Speech: of Speech :-
1. Metaphor
“Knell of parting day” → the end of day compared to a funeral bell (death).
“Narrow cell” → the grave as a coffin or prison.
“Lowly bed” → the grave as a bed of eternal rest.
“Paths of glory lead but to the grave” → human ambition ends in death.
“Precincts of the cheerful day” → life represented as a bright, enclosed space.
2. Personification
“Stillness holds” (Stanza 2) → silence personified as holding the air.
“The moping owl does to the moon complain” → owl given human feelings.
“Chill Penury repressed their noble rage” → poverty acting like a tyrant.
“Heav’n did a recompense as largely send” → Heaven as a just giver.
“Melancholy marked him for her own” → personified as a companion.
3. Symbolism
Churchyard: equality in death, humble dignity.
Owl: solitude, death, mourning.
Yew tree: traditional symbol of death and immortality.
Gems in ocean / Flowers in desert air: wasted genius and unseen beauty.
Ashes with fire: lingering human passion beyond death.
Sun / light: life, truth, renewal.
Darkness / night: death, mortality, oblivion.
4. Allusion
Hampden: symbol of political courage.
Milton: poetic genius.
Cromwell: power and tyranny.
Christian imagery: Heaven, Mercy, Father, God.
Classical echoes: elegiac meditation modeled on ancient epitaphs.
5. Rhetorical Questions
“Can storied urn or animated bust / Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?”
“Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust?”
“Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?”
👉 Used to emphasize the futility of worldly pride against death.
6. Antithesis & Contrast
“Virtues confined, crimes confined” (Stanza 17) → obscurity limits both good and evil.
“Mute inglorious Milton” → paradoxical combination of silence and greatness.
“Paths of glory… grave” → ambition vs. mortality.
“Pleasing anxious being” → irony of life’s joys mixed with cares.
7. Imagery & Sensory Appeal
Sound imagery: “beetle wheels his droning flight,” “cock’s shrill clarion,” “tinklings lull the distant folds.”
Visual imagery: twilight landscape, rugged elms, babbling brook, nodding beech.
Kinesthetic imagery: plowman plodding, harvest work, children climbing their father’s knees.
8. Euphemism
“Sleep” for death.
“Narrow cell” for grave.
“Lowly bed” for burial place.
9. Pathetic Fallacy
“Wood smiling as in scorn” → nature reflecting human emotions.
10. Parallelism & Repetition
“Full many a gem… Full many a flow’r…” → rhetorical emphasis.
“Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood…” → parallel construction stressing absence.
