Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow…
2023
Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate option.
1 Love came to Flora asking for a flower
That would of flowers be undisputed queen,
The lily and the rose, long, long had been
Rivals for that high honor. Bards of power
5 Had sung their claims. ‘The rose can never
tower
Like the pale lily with her Juno mien’ –
‘But is the lily lovelier ?’ Thus between
Flower-factions rang the strife in Psyche’s
bower.
‘Give me a flower delicious as the rose
10 And stately as the lily in her pride’ –
‘But of what colour ?’ – ‘Rose-red’, Love first
chose,
Then prayed, ‘No, lily-white – or, both provide;’
And Flora gave the lotus, ‘rose-red’ dyed,
And ‘lily-white’, the queenliest flower that
blows.
Identify the poetic devices in Line 1 and Line 10.
- A.
anaphora, metaphor
- B.
personification, simile
- C.
metaphor, simile
- D.
alliteration, simile
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Personification is a figure of speech in which a non-human idea, object, or abstraction is given human qualities, actions, or feelings. A simile is a figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two distinct things using a connecting word such as 'as' or 'like'.
In Line 1, 'Love came to Flora asking for a flower', the abstract idea of Love is shown performing distinctly human actions - coming and asking - which is personification. In Line 10, 'And stately as the lily in her pride', the flower's stateliness is directly compared to the lily using the connecting word 'as', which makes this a simile.
Anaphora requires the identical word or phrase to be repeated at the start of consecutive lines or clauses. Neither Line 1 nor Line 10 shows such repetition, so anaphora does not describe either line.
A metaphor states a direct equivalence between two things without using a connecting word like 'as' or 'like'. Line 10's comparison is introduced by the explicit connecting word 'as', so it is a simile rather than a metaphor.
The 'Flora', 'for', and 'flower' sequence does form a secondary /f/-sound pattern, and alliteration is a fair observation about it in isolation. But it is not the device this line is testing: the exam-intended and clearly dominant reading of Line 1 is personification, since the entire clause turns the abstract idea of Love into an agent performing sustained human action - it 'came' and went 'asking for a flower'. Line 10, for its part, is unambiguously a simile, introduced by the connecting word 'as', not a further instance of alliteration.
Line 1 exhibits personification and Line 10 exhibits simile - the pairing 'personification, simile' is the only one of the four pairings that correctly describes both lines; the pairings built from anaphora, metaphor, or alliteration each fail to describe at least one of the two lines.