Read the poem given below and answer the questions that follow: Great, wide,…
2024
Read the poem given below and answer the questions that follow:
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water round you curled.
And the wonderful grass upon your breast
World, you are beautifully drest.
The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree,
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.
You friendly Earth! How far do you go,
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow.
With cities and gardens, and cliffs, and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles ?
Ah, you are so great, and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers today,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,
‘You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot,
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!'
Identify the figures of speech in line 1 and line 4.
- A.
anaphora, personification
- B.
alliteration, metaphor
- C.
alliteration, personification
- D.
simile, alliteration
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept: Alliteration is the repetition of the same initial consonant sound in nearby words within a line. Personification gives a non-human thing — an object, animal, or abstract idea — human qualities, feelings, or actions. These differ from anaphora (repeating the same word or phrase at the start of successive clauses or sentences), metaphor (an implied equation stating one thing IS a distinct other thing, e.g. ‘the world is a stage’, without using ‘like’ or ‘as’), and simile (an explicit comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’).
Application: Line 1 — “Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,” — repeats the initial /w/ sound across “wide,” “wonderful,” and “world” within the same line, which is alliteration. Line 4 — “World, you are beautifully drest.” — addresses the Earth directly as “you” and describes it as being “drest” (dressed), a human action given to an inanimate object, which is personification.
Cross-check: Each remaining option fails on at least one of its two claimed devices:
“anaphora, personification” — anaphora needs the SAME word or phrase repeated at the START of successive clauses or sentences; line 1 does not repeat an opening word or phrase across successive clauses or sentences, so anaphora does not fit.
“alliteration, metaphor” — metaphor asserts an implied equation between two distinct things (X is Y); line 4 does not equate the Earth with a different noun — it simply grants the Earth a human action (getting “drest”), which is personification, a different device from metaphor.
“simile, alliteration” — simile needs an explicit comparison word such as “like” or “as”; line 1 has no such comparison word, so simile does not fit.
Result: Line 1 uses alliteration and line 4 uses personification.