Figurative Language (A-H)
The repetition of a consonant sound, usually at the beginning of two or more words in a line of verse.
Alliteration
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate."- W. Shakespeare
Blank Verse
Rhyming of words within, rather than at the end of, lines.
Internal Rhyme
A stanza consisting of four lines.
Quatrain
He is as bald as a billiard ball
Simile
The implied or suggested meaning of a word or expression through emotional, literary, or sound associations
Connotation
A poem of grief.
Elegy
Life is a candle.
Metaphor
A regular pattern of rhyme.
Meter
An object that stands for an idea: a pair of scales.
Symbol
A comparison of ideas or objects which are essentially different but which are alike in some significant way.
Analogy
A story told in verse form.
Narrative Poem
Stealing is bad.
Moral
A stanza of six lines; the concluding six lines of a sonnet.
Sestet
"The sails came into the harbour"
Synecdoche
"To pass away" rather than "die"
Euphemism
Any short poem that seems to be esoecially musical and expresses, in most instances, the poet's clearly revealed thoughts and feelings.
Lyric
A play on words
Pun
A group of lines of verse, generally four or more, arranged to a fixed pattern.
Stanza
The character speaks their thoughts aloud, apparently unheard by others who may be on stage.
Soliloquy
"His mind was a million miles away."
Hyperbole
A long narrative poem about heroic individuals performing acts of great consequences.
Epic
Places, things, animals, or ideas are endowed with human qualities.
Personification
A metrical division consisting of one accented syllable and all unaccented syllables associated with it.
Foot
Any piece of writing which criticizes manners, individuals, or political and social institutions, by holding them up to ridicule.
Satire