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Explain literary devices in the poem On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats

Explain literary devices in the poem On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats

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  1. Following literary devices have been used in the poem On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats:

    1. Personification: When the poet gives human characteristics to animals, plants or other non-living things. In the poem, the poet the Grasshopper using the word “he”. One more example is “the frost has wrought a silence” Frost is symbolised as something living.
    2. Metaphor: It is the direct comparison of two or more things. In the poem, the poet compares earth’s poetry with the singing of grasshopper and also compares the singing of grasshopper with that of cricket.
    3. Oxymoron: It is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms are combined. e.g. “pleasant weed”. Weed is an unnecessary thing. However the poet calls in pleasant because it is a part of nature.
    4. Enjambment: It is the continuation of a sentence without a pause, beyond the end of a line, couplet or a stanza. e.g. “when the frost has wrought a silence”, “from the stove there shrills the cricket’s song” etc.
    5. Alliteration: It is the repetition of identical initial consonant sounds in successive or closely associated syllables within a group of words. e.g. “voice will run”, “from hedge to hedge”,  “winter evening, when…”.
    6. Inversion: it is the inverting of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase. e.g. “Poetry of earth is ceasing never“, “And seems to one is drowsiness half lost“.

    Read summary of this poem.

     

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